SB    M^    021 


I 


IN  MEMOH1AM 
GEORGE  HOLMES  HOWISON 


ST.  PAUL  &  PROTESTANTISM 


A.ND 


LAST  ESSAYS   OX  CHURCH  &  RELIGION 


ST.  PAUL  &  PROTESTANTISM 

WITH  AN  ESSAY  ON 
PURITANISM  &  THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND 

AND 

LAST  ESSAYS 
ON  CHUKCH  &  RELIGION 


BY  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 


£cfo  gorfc 
MACMILLAN  AND  CO. 

1883 


A  7 


*  i  •  ■ 


Howw»\Scrv>  ~    ' 


Printed  by  R.  &  R.  Clark,  Edinburgh. 


ST.  PAUL  AND  PEOTESTANTISM 

WITH  AN  ESSAY  ON  PURITANISM  AND 
THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND 


L49 


"  We  often  read  the  Scripture  without  comprehending  its  full  meaning ; 
however,  let  us  not  be  discouraged.  The  light,  in  God's  good  time,  will 
break  out,  and  disperse  the  darkness  ;  and  we  shall  see  the  mysteries  of 
the  Gospel."  Bishop  Wilson. 

"  With  them  (the  Puritans)  nothing  is  more  familiar  than  to  plead  in 
their  causes  the  Law  of  God,  the  Word  of  the  Lord  ;  who  notwithstanding, 
when  they  come  to  allege  what  word  and  what  law  they  mean,  their 
common  ordinary  practice  is  to  quote  by-speeches,  and  to  urge  them  as  if 
they  were  written  in  most  exact  form  of  law.  What  is  to  add  to  the  Law 
of  God  if  this  be  not  ?  "  Hooker. 

"  It  will  be  found  at  last,  that  unity,  and  the  peace  of  the  Church,  will 
conduce  more  to  the  saving  of  souls,  than  the  most  specious  sects, 
varnished  with  the  most  pious,  specious  pretences." 

Bishop  Wilson. 


PEEFACE. 

(1870.) 

The  essay  following  the  treatise  on  St.  Paul  and 
Protestantism,  was  meant  to  clear  away  offence  or 
misunderstanding  which  had  arisen  out  of  that 
treatise.  There  still  remain  one  or  two  points  on 
which  a  word  of  explanation  may  be  useful,  and  to 
them  this  preface  is  addressed. 

The  general  objection,  that  the  scheme  of  doctrine 
criticised  by  me  is  common  to  both  Puritanism  and 
the  Church  of  England,  and  does  not  characterise  the 
one  more  essentially  than  the  other,  has  been  re- 
moved, I  hope,  by  the  concluding  essay.  But  it  is 
said  that  there  is,  at  any  rate,  a  large  party  in  the 
Church  of  England, — the  so-called  Evangelical  party, 
— which  holds  just  the  scheme  of  doctrine  I  have 
called  Puritan ;  that  this  large  party,  at  least,  if  not 
the  whole  Church  of  England,  is  as  much  a  strong- 
hold of  the  distinctive  Puritan  tenets  as  the  Noncon- 
formists are;  and  that  to  tax  the  Nonconformists  with 
these  tenets,  and  to  say  nothing  about  the  Evangelical 
clergy  holding  them  too,  is  injurious  and  unfair. 


Vlll  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

The  Evangelical  party  in  the  Church  of  England 
we  must  always,  certainly,  have  a  disposition  to 
treat  with  forbearance,  inasmuch  as  this  party  has 
so  strongly  loved  what  is  indeed  the  most  lovable 
of  things, — religion.  They  have  also  avoided  that 
unblessed  mixture  of  politics  and  religion  by  which 
both  politics  and  religion  are  spoilt.  This,  however, 
would  not  alone  have  prevented  our  making  them 
jointly  answerable  with  the  Puritans  for  that  body 
of  opinions  which  calls  itself  Scriptural  Protestant- 
ism, but  which  is,  in  truth,  a  perversion  of  St.  Paul's 
Epistle  to  the  Romans.  But  there  is  this  difference 
between  the  Evangelical  party  in  the  Church  of 
England  and  the  Puritans  outside  her; — the  Evan- 
gelicals have  not  added  to  the  first  error  of  holding 
this  unsound  body  of  opinions,  the  second  error  of 
separating  for  them.  They  have  thus,  as  we  have 
already  noticed,  escaped  the  mixing  of  politics  and 
religion,  which  arises  directly  and  naturally  out  of 
this  separating  for  opinions.  But  they  have  also 
done  that  which  we  most  blame  Nonconformity  for 
not  doing ; — they  have  left  themselves  in  the  way  of 
development.  Practically  they  have  admitted  that 
the  Christian  Church  is  built,  not  on  the  foundation 
of  Lutheran  and  Calvinist  dogmas,  but  on  the  foun- 
dation :  Let  every  one  that  nameth  the  name  of  Christ 
depart  from  iniquity}  Mr.  Eyle  or  the  Dean  of  Ripon 
may  have  as  erroneous  notions  as  to  what  truth  and 
the  gospel  really  is,  as  Mr.  Spurgeon  or  the  President 
of  the  Wesleyan  Conference ;  but  they  do  not  tie 

1  2  Timothy  ii.  19. 


PREFACE.  ix 

themselves  tighter  still  to  these  erroneous  notions, 
nor  do  their  best  to  cut  themselves  off  from  out- 
growing them,  by  resolving  to  have  no  felloivship  ivith 
the  man  of  sin  who  holds  different  notions.  On  the 
contrary,  they  are  worshippers  in  the  same  Church, 
professors  of  the  same  faith,  ministers  of  the  same 
confraternity,  as  men  who  hold  that  their  Scrijrtural 
Protestantism  is  all  wrong,  and  who  hold  other  notions 
of  their  own  quite  at  variance  with  it.  And  thus 
they  do  homage  to  an  ideal  of  Christianity  which  is 
larger,  higher,  and  better  than  either  their  notions 
or  those  of  their  opponents,  and  in  respect  of  which 
both  their  notions  and  those  of  their  opponents  are 
inadequate ;  and  this  admission  of  the  relative  in- 
adequacy of  their  notions  is  itself  a  stage  towards 
the  future  admission  of  their  positive  inadequacy. 

In  fact,  the  popular  Protestant  theology,  which 
we  have  criticised  as  such  a  grave  perversion  of  the 
teaching  of  St.  Paul,  has  not  in  the  so-called  Evan- 
gelical party  of  the  Church  of  England  its  chief 
centre  and  stronghold.  This  party,  which,  following 
in  the  wake  of  Wesley  and  others,  so  felt  in  a  day  of 
general  insensibility  the  power  and  comfort  of  the 
Christian  religion,  and  which  did  so  much  to  make 
others  feel  them,  but  which  also  adopted  and  pro- 
mulgated a  scientific  account  so  inadequate  and  so 
misleading  of  the  religion  which  attracted  it, — this 
great  party  has  done  its  work,  and  is  now  under- 
going that  law  of  transformation  and  development 
which  obtains  in  a  national  Church.  The  power  is 
passing  from  it  to  others,  who  will  make  good  some 


X  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

of  the  aspects  of  religion  which  the  Evangelicals 
neglected,  and  who  will  then,  in  their  turn,  from 
the  same  cause  of  the  scientific  inadequacy  of  their 
conception  of  Christianity,  change  and  pass  away. 
The  Evangelical  clergy  no  longer  recruits  itself  with 
success,  no  longer  lays  hold  on  such  promising  sub- 
jects as  formerly.  It  is  losing  the  future  and  feels 
that  it  is  losing  it.  Its  signs  of  a  vigorous  life,  its 
gaiety  and  audacity,  are  confined  to  its  older  members, 
too  powerful  to  lose  their  own  vigour,  but  without 
successors  to  whom  to  transmit  it.  It  was  impossible 
not  to  admire  the  genuine  and  rich  though  somewhat 
brutal  humour  of  the  Dean  of  Kipon's  famous  simili- 
tude of  the  two  lepers.1  But  from  which  of  the 
younger  members  of  the  Evangelical  clergy  do  such 
strokes  now  come  ?  The  best  of  their  own  younger 
generation,  the  soldiers  of  their  own  training,  are 
slipping  away  from  them ;  and  he  who  looks  for  the 
source  whence  popular  Puritan  theology  now  derives 
power  and  perpetuation,  will  not  fix  his  eyes  on  the 
Evangelical  clergy  of  the  Church  of  England. 

Another  point  where  a  word  of  explanation  seems 
desirable  is  the  objection  taken  on  a  kind  of  personal 

1  In  a  letter  to  the  Times  respecting  Dr.  Pusey  and  Dr. 
Temple,  during  the  discussion  caused  by  Dr.  Temple's  appoint- 
ment to  the  see  of  Exete1'.  Dr.  Temple  was  the  total  leper,  so 
evidently  a  leper  that  all  men  would  instinctively  avoid  him, 
and  he  ceased  to  be  dangerous  ;  Dr.  Pusey  was  the  partial  leper, 
less  deeply  tainted,  but  on  that  very  account  more  dangerous, 
because  less  likely  to  terrify  peoxne  from  coming  near  him.  A 
piece  of  polemical  humour,  racy,  indeed,  but  hardly  urbane, 
and  still  less  Christian  ! 


PREFACE.  XI 

ground  to  the  criticism  of  St.  Paul's  doctrine  which 
we  have  attempted.  "What!"  it  is  said,  "if  this 
view  of  St.  Paul's  meaning,  so  unlike  the  received 
view,  were  the  true  one,  do  you  suppose  it  would 
have  been  left  for  you  to  discover  it?  Are  you 
wiser  than  the  hundreds  of  learned  people  who  for 
generation  after  generation  have  been  occupying 
themselves  with  St.  Paul  and  little  else1?  Has  it 
been  left  for  you  to  bring  in  a  new  religion  and 
found  a  new  church?"  Now  on  this  line  of  ex- 
postulation, which,  so  far  as  it  draws  from  un- 
worthiness  of  ours  its  argument,  appears  to  have, 
no  doubt,  great  force,  there  are  three  remarks  to  be 
offered.  In  the  first  place,  even  if  the  version  of  St. 
Paul  which  we  propound  were  both  new  and  true, 
yet  we  do  not,  on  that  account,  make  of  it  a  new 
religion  or  set  up  a  new  church  for  its  sake.  That 
would  be  separating  for  opinions,  heresy,  which  is  just 
what  we  reproach  the  Nonconformists  with.  In  the 
seventh  century,  there  arose  near  the  Euphrates  a 
sect  called  Paulicians,  who  professed  to  form  them- 
selves on  the  pure  doctrine  of  St.  Paul,  which  other 
Christians,  they  said,  had  misunderstood  and  cor- 
rupted. And  we,  I  suppose,  having  discovered  how 
popular  Protestantism  perverts  St.  Paul,  are  expected 
to  try  and  make  a  new  sect  of  Paulicians  on  the 
strength  of  this  discovery;  such  being  just  the 
course  which  our  Puritan  friends  would  themselves 
eagerly  take  in  like  case.  But  the  Christian  Church 
is  founded,  not  on  a  correct  speculative  knowledge 
of  the  ideas  of  Paul,  but  on  the  much  surer  ground  : 


Xll  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

Let  every  one  that  nameth  the  name  of  Christ  depart  from 
iniquity  ;  and,  holding  this  to  be  so,  we  might  change 
the  current  strain  of  doctrinal  theology  from  one  end 
to  the  other,  without,  on  that  account,  setting  up  any 
new  church  or  bringing  in  any  new  religion. 

In  the  second  place,  the  version  we  propound  of 
St.  Paul's  line  of  thought  is  not  new,  is  not  of  our  dis- 
covering. It  belongs  to  the  "Zeit-Geist,"  or  time- 
spirit,  it  is  in  the  air,  and  many  have  long  been 
anticipating  it,  preparing  it,  setting  forth  this  and 
that  part  of  it,  till  there  is  not  a  part,  probably,  of 
all  we  have  said,  which  has  not  already  been  said  by 
others  before  us,  and  said  more  learnedly  and  fully 
than  we  can  say  it.  All  we  have  done  is  to  take  it 
as  a  whole,  and  give  a  plain,  popular,  connected  ex- 
position of  it ;  for  which,  perhaps,  our  notions  about 
culture,  about  the  many  sides  to  the  human  spirit, 
about  making  these  sides  help  one  another  instead  of 
remaining  enemies  and  strangers,  have  been  of  some 
advantage.  For  most  of  those  who  read  St.  Paul 
diligently  are  Hebraisers ;  they  regard  little  except 
the  Hebraising  impulse  in  us  and  the  documents 
which  concern  it.  They  have  little  notion  of  letting 
their  consciousness  play  on  things  freely,  little  ear  for 
the  voice  of  the  "  Zeit-Geist ; "  and  they  are  so  im- 
mersed in  an  order  of  thoughts  and  words  which  are 
peculiar,  that,  in  the  broad  general  order  of  thoughts 
and  words,  which  is  the  life  of  popular  exposition, 
they  are  not  very  much  at  home. 

Thirdly,  and  in  the  last  place,  we  by  no  means 
put  forth  our  version  of  St.  Paul's  line  of  thought  as 


PREFACE.  Xlll 

true,  in  the  same  fashion  as  Puritanism  put  forth  its 
Scrvptwal  Protestantism,  or  gospel,  as  true.  Their 
truth  the  Puritans  exhibit  as  a  sort  of  cast-iron  pro- 
duct, rigid,  definite,  and  complete,  which  they  have 
got  once  for  all,  and  which  can  no  longer  have  any- 
thing added  to  it  or  anything  withdrawn  from  it. 
But  of  our  rendering  of  St.  Paul's  thought  we  con- 
ceive rather  as  of  a  product  of  nature,  which  has 
grown  to  be  what  it  is  and  which  will  grow  more  ; 
which  will  not  stand  just  as  we  now  exhibit  it,  but 
which  will  gain  some  aspects  which  we  now  fail  to 
show  in  it,  and  will  drop  some  which  we  now  give 
it ;  which  will  be  developed,  in  short,  farther,  just  in 
like  manner  as  it  has  reached  its  present  stage  hy 
development. 

Thus  we  present  our  conceptions,  neither  as  some- 
thing quite  new  nor  as  something  quite  true ;  nor 
yet  as  any  ground,  even  supposing  they  were  quite 
new  and  true,  for  a  separate  church  or  religion.  But 
so  far  they  are,  we  think,  new  and  true,  and  a  fruit 
of  sound  development,  a  genuine  product  of  the 
"  Zeit-Geist,"  that  their  mere  contact  seems  to  make 
the  old  Puritan  conceptions  look  unlikely  and  inde- 
fensible, and  begin  a  sort  of  remodelling  and  refacing 
of  themselves.  Let  us  just  see  how  far  this  change 
has  practically  gone. 

The  formal  and  scholastic  version  of  its  theology, 
Calvinist  or  Arminian,  as  given  by  its  seventeenth- 
century  fathers,  and  enshrined  in  the  trust-deeds  of 
so  many  of  its  chapels, — of  this,  at  any  rate,  modern 
Puritanism  is  beginning  to  feel  shy.     Take  the  Cal- 


XIV  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

vinist  doctrine  of  election.  "By  God's  degree  a 
certain  number  of  angels  and  men  are  predestinated, 
out  of  God's  mere  free  grace  and  love,  without  any 
foresight  of  faith  or  good  works  in  them,  to  everlast- 
ing life ;  and  others  foreordained,  according  to  the 
unsearchable  counsel  of  his  will,  whereby  he  extends 
or  withholds  mercy  as  he  pleases,  to  everlasting 
death."  In  that  scientific  form,  at  least,  the  doctrine 
of  election  begins  to  look  dubious  to  the  Calvinistic 
Puritan,  and  he  puts  it  a  good  deal  out  of  sight. 
Take  the  Arminian  doctrine  of  justification.  "We 
could  not  expect  any  relief  from  heaven  out  of  that 
misery  under  which  we  lie,  were  not  God's  displeasure 
against  us  first  pacified  and  our  sins  remitted.  This 
is  the  signal  and  transcendent  benefit  of  our  free 
justification  through  the  blood  of  Christ,  that  God's 
offence  justly  conceived  against  us  for  our  sins  (which 
would  have  been  an  eternal  bar  and  restraint  to  the 
efflux  of  his  grace  upon  us)  being  removed,  the  divine 
grace  and  bounty  may  freely  flow  forth  upon  us." 
In  that  scientific  form,  the  doctrine  of  justification 
begins  to  look  less  satisfactory  to  the  Arminian 
Puritan,  and  he  tends  to  put  it  out  of  sight. 

The  same  may  be  said  of  the  doctrine  of  election 
in  its  plain  popular  form  of  statement  also.  "I 
hold,"  says  Whitefield,  in  the  forcible  style  which  so 
took  his  hearers'  fancy,  —  "I  hold  that  a  certain 
number  are  elected  from  eternity,  and  these  must 
and  shall  be  saved,  and  the  rest  of  mankind  must 
and  shall  be  damned."  A  Calvinistic  Puritan  now- 
adays must  be  either  a  fervid  Welsh  Dissenter,  or  a 


PREFACE.  XV 

strenuous  Particular  Baptist  in  some  remote  place  in 
the  country,  not  to  be  a  little  staggered  at  this  sort 
of  expression.  As  to  the  doctrine  of  justification  in 
its  current,  popular  form  of  statement,  the  case  is 
somewhat  different.  "My  own  works,"  says  Wesley, 
"my  own  sufferings,  my  own  righteousness,  are  so 
far  from  reconciling  me  to  an  offended  God,  so  far 
from  making  any  atonement  for  the  least  of  those 
sins  which  are  more  in  number  than  the  hairs  of  my 
head,  that  the  most  specious  of  them  need  an  atone- 
ment themselves  ;  that,  having  the  sentence  of  death 
in  my  heart  and  nothing  in  or  of  myself  to  plead,  I 
have  no  hope  but  that  of  being  justified  freely  through 
the  redemption  that  is  in  Jesus.  The  faith  I  want 
is  a  sure  trust  and  confidence  in  God,  that  through 
the  merits  of  Christ  my  sins  are  forgiven  and  I  recon- 
ciled to  the  favour  of  God.  Believe  and  thou  shalt 
be  saved  !  He  that  believeth  is  passed  from  death  to 
life.  Faith  is  the  free  gift  of  God,  which  he  bestows 
not  on  those  who  are  worthy  of  his  favour,  not  on 
such  as  are  previously  holy  and  so  fit  to  be  crowned 
with  all  the  blessings  of  his  goodness,  but  on  the 
ungodly  and  unholy,  who  till  that  hour  were  fit  only 
for  everlasting  damnation.  Look  for  sanctification 
just  as  you  are,  as  a  poor  sinner  that  has  nothing  to 
pay,  nothing  to  plead  but  Christ  died."  Deliverances 
of  this  sort,  which  in  Wesley  are  frequent  and  in 
Wesley's  followers  are  unceasing,  still,  no  doubt, 
pass  current  everywhere  with  Puritanism,  are  ex- 
pected as  of  course,  and  find  favour ;  they  are  just 
what  Puritans  commonly  mean  by  Scriptural  Protest- 


XVI  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

antism,  the  truth,  the  gospel -feast.  Nevertheless  they 
no  longer  quite  satisfy ;  the  better  minds  among 
Puritans  try  instinctively  to  give  some  fresh  turn  or 
development  to  them ;  they  are  no  longer,  to  minds 
of  this  order,  an  unquestionable  word  and  a  sure 
stay ;  and  from  this  point  to  their  final  transforma- 
tion the  course  is  certain.  The  predestinarian  and 
solifidian  dogmas,  for  the  very  sake  of  which  our 
Puritan  churches  came  into  existence,  begin  to  feel 
the  irresistible  breath  of  the  "  Zeit-Geist ;  "  some  of 
them  melt  quicker,  others  slower,  but  all  of  them  are 
doomed.  Under  the  eyes  of  this  generation  Puritan 
Dissent  has  to  execute  an  entire  change  of  front,  and 
to  present  us  with  a  new  reason  for  its  existing. 
What  will  that  new  reason  be  ? 

There  needs  no  conjuror  to  tell  us.  It  will  be  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Conder's  reason,  which  we  have  quoted  in 
our  concluding  essay.  It  will  be  Scriptural  Pro- 
testantism in  church -order,  rather  than  Scriptural 
Protestantism  in  church- doctrine.  "Congregational 
Nonconformists  can  never  be  incorporated  into  an 
organic  union  with  Anglican  Episcopacy,  because 
there  is  not  even  the  shadow  of  an  outline  of  it  in 
the  New  Testament,  and  it  is  our  assertion  and  pro- 
found belief  that  Christ  and  the  Apostles  have  given 
us  all  the  laws  that  are  necessary  for  the  constitution 
and  government  of  the  Church. "  This  makes  church- 
government  not  a  secondary  matter  of  form,  growth, 
and  expediency,  but  a  matter  of  the  essence  of  Chris- 
tianity and  ordained  in  Scripture.  Expressly  set 
forth  in  Scripture  it  is  not ;  so  it  has  to  be  gathered 


PREFACE.  xvii 

from  Scripture  by  collection,  and  every  one  gathers 
it  in  his  own  way.  Unity  is  of  no  great  import- 
ance ;  but  that  every  man  should  live  in  a  church- 
order  which  he  judges  to  be  scriptural,  is  of  the 
greatest  importance.  This  brings  us  to  Mr.  Miall's 
standard-maxim  :  The  Dissidence  of  Dissent,  and  the 
Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion  !  The  more 
freely  the  sects  develop  themselves,  the  better.  The 
Church  of  England  herself  is  but  the  dominant  sect  ; 
her  pretensions  to  bring  back  the  Dissenters  within 
her  pale  are  offensive  and  ridiculous.  What  we  ought 
to  aim  at  is  perfect  equality,  and  that  the  other  sects 
should  balance  her. 

On  the  old,  old  subject  of  the  want  of  historic  and 
philosophic  sense  shown  by  those  who  would  make 
church-government  a  matter  of  scriptural  regulation, 
I  say  nothing  at  present.  A  Wesleyan  minister,  the 
Eev.  Mr.  Willey,  said  the  other  day  at  Leeds  :  "He 
did  not  find  anything  in  either  the  Old  or  New  Testa- 
ment to  the  effect  that  Christian  ministers  should 
become  State-servants,  like  soldiers  or  excisemen." 
He  might  as  well  have  added  that  he  did  not  find 
there  anything  to  the  effect  that  they  should  wear 
braces  !  But  on  this  point  I  am  not  here  going  to 
enlarge.  What  I  am  now  concerned  with  is  the  rela- 
tion of  this  new  ground  of  existence,  which  more  and 
more  the  Puritan  Churches  take  and  will  take  as  they 
lose  their  old  ground,  to  the  Christian  religion.  In 
the  speech  which  Mr.  Winterbotham 1  made  on  the 

1  Mr.  Winterbotham  has  since  died.    Nothing  in  my  remarks 
on  his  speech  need  prevent  me  from  expressing  here  my  high 
VOL.  VII.  b 


XVlll  ST.  PAUL  AND  PKOTESTANTISM. 

Education  Bill,  a  speech  which  I  had  the  advantage 
of  hearing,  there  were  uncommon  facilities  supplied 
for  judging  of  this  relation ;  indeed  that  able  speech 
presented  a  striking  picture  of  it. 

And  what  a  picture  it  was,  good  heavens  !  The 
Puritans  say  they  love  righteousness,  and  they  are 
offended  with  us  for  rejoining  that  the  righteousness 
of  which  they  boast  is  the  righteousness  of  the  earlier 
Jews  of  the  Old  Testament,  which  consisted  mainly 
in  smiting  the  Lord's  enemies  and  their  own  under 
the  fifth  rib.  And  we  say  that  the  newer  and 
specially  Christian  sort  of  righteousness  is  something 
different  from  this  ;  that  the  Puritans  are,  and  always 
have  been,  deficient  in  the  specially  Christian  sort  of 
righteousness  ;  that  men  like  St.  Francis  of  Sales,  in 
the  Koman  Catholic  Church,  and  Bishop  Wilson,  in 
the  Church  of  England,  show  far  more  of  it  than  any 
Puritans ;  and  that  St.  Paul's  signal  and  eternally 
fruitful  growth  in  righteousness  dates  just  from  his 
breach  with  the  Puritans  of  his  day.  Let  us  revert 
to  Paul's  list  of  fruits  of  the  spirit,  on  which  we  have 
so  often  insisted  in  the  pages  which  follow  :  love,  joy, 
yeace,  long-suffering,  kindness,  goodness,  faith,  mildness, 
self-control}  We  keep  to  this  particular  list  for  the 
sake  of  greater  distinctness  ;  but  St.  Paul  has  per- 
petually lists  of  the  kind,  all  pointing  the  same  way, 
and  all  showing  what  he  meant  by  Christian  right- 
eousness, what  he  found  specially  in  Christ.      They 

esteem  for  his  character,  accomplishments,  oratorical  faculty 
and  general  promise,  and  my  sincere  regret  for  his  loss. 

1  Gal.  v.  22,  23. 


PREFACE.  xix 

may  all  be  concluded  in  two  qualities,  the  qualities 
which  Jesus  Christ  told  his  disciples  to  learn  of  him, 
the  qualities  in  the  name  of  which,  as  specially 
Christ's  qualities,  Paul  adjured  his  converts.  "Learn 
of  me,"  said  Jesus,  "that  I  am  mild  and  lowly  in 
hearty  "I  beseech  you,"  said  Paul,  "  by  the  mildness 
and  gentleness  of  Christ." l  The  word  which  our  Bibles 
translate  by  "  gentleness,"  means  more  properly 
"reasonableness  with  sweetness,"  "sweet  reasonable- 
ness." "I  beseech  you  by  the  mildness  and  sweet 
reasonableness  of  Christ"  This  mildness  and  sweet 
reasonableness  it  was,  which,  stamped  with  the  indi- 
vidual charm  they  had  in  Jesus  Christ,  came  to  the 
world  as  something  new,  won  its  heart  and  conquered 
it.  Every  one  had  been  asserting  his  ordinary  self 
and  was  miserable ;  to  forbear  to  assert  one's  ordinary 
self,  to  place  one's  happiness  in  mildness  and  sweet 
reasonableness,  was  a  revelation.  As  men  followed 
this  novel  route  to  happiness,  a  living  spring  opened 
beside  their  way,  the  spring  of  charity ;  and  out  of 
this  spring  arose  those  two  heavenly  visitants,  Charis 
and  Irene,  grace  and  ])eace,  which  enraptured  the  poor 
wayfarer,  and  filled  him  with  a  joy  which  brought 
all  the  world  after  him.  And  still,  whenever  these 
visitants  appear,  as  appear  for  a  witness  to  the  vitality 
of  Christianity  they  daily  do,  it  is  from  the  same 
spring  that  they  arise ;  and  this  spring  is  opened 
solely  by  the  mildness  and  sweet  reasonableness 
which  forbears  to  assert  our  ordinary  self,  nay,  which 
even  takes  pleasure  in  effacing  it. 

1  8ia  tt)$  ir pavTrjTos  Kal  £wiet.Keias  rod  Xptarou. — 2  Cor.  x.  1. 


XX  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

And  now  let  us  turn  to  Mr.  Winterbotham  and  the 
Protestant  Dissenters.  He  interprets  their  very  inner 
mind,  he  says ;  that  which  he  declares  in  their  name, 
they  are  all  feeling,  and  would  declare  for  themselves 
if  they  could.  "  There  was  a  spirit  of  watchful  jealousy 
on  the  part  of  the  Dissenters,  which  made  them  prone  to 
take  offence ;  therefore  statesmen  should  not  introduce  the 
Established  Church  into  all  the  institutions  of  the  country." 
That  •  is  positively  the  whole  speech  !  "  Strife, 
jealousy,  wrath,  contentions,  backbitings," 1  —  we 
know  the  catalogue.  And  the  Dissenters  are,  by 
their  own  confession,  so  full  of  these,  and  the  very 
existence  of  an  organisation  of  Dissent  so  makes  them 
a  necessity,  that  the  State  is  required  to  frame  its 
legislation  in  consideration  of  them  !  Was  there  ever 
such  a  confession  made  1  Here  are  people  existing 
for  the  sake  of  a  religion  of  which  the  essence  is  mild- 
ness and  sweet  reasonableness,  and  the  forbearing  to 
assert  our  ordinary  self ;  and  they  declare  them- 
selves so  full  of  the  very  temper  and  habits  against 
which  that  religion  is  specially  levelled,  that  they 
require  to  have  even  the  occasion  of  forbearing  to 
assert  their  ordinary  self  removed  out  of  their  way, 
because  they  are  quite  sure  they  will  never  comply 
with  it ! 

Never  was  there  a  more  instructive  comment  on 
the  blessings  of  separation,  which  we  are  so  often 
invited  by  separatists  to  admire.  Why  does  not 
Dissent  forbear  to  assert  its  ordinary  self,  and  help 
to  win  the  world  to  the  mildness  and  sweet  reason- 

1  2  Cor.  xii.  20. 


PREFACE.  xxi 

ableness  of  Christ,  without  this  vain  contest  about 
machinery  ?  Why  does  not  the  Church  1  is  the 
Dissenter's  answer.  What  an  answer  for  a  Chris- 
tian !  We  are  to  defer  giving  up  our  ordinary  self 
until  our  neighbour  shall  have  given  up  his ;  that 
is,  we  are  never  to  give  it  up  at  all.  But  I  will 
answer  the  question  on  more  mundane  grounds. 
Why  are  we  to  be  more  blamed  than  the  Church 
for  the  strife  arising  out  of  our  rival  existences'? 
asks  the  Dissenter.  Because  the  Church  cannot 
help  existing,  and  you  can !  Therefore,  contra 
ecclesiam  nemo  pacificus,  as  Baxter  himself  said  in 
his  better  moments.  Because  the  Church  is  there ; 
because  strife,  jealousy,  and  self-assertion  are  sure 
to  come  with  breaking  off  from  her;  and  because 
strife,  jealousy,  and  self-assertion  are  the  very 
miseries  against  which  Christianity  is  firstly  levelled ; 
— therefore  we  say  that  a  Christian  is  inexcusable 
in  breaking  with  the  Church,  except  for  a  departure 
from  the  primal  ground  of  her  foundation :  Let  every 
one  that  nameth  the  name  of  Christ  depart  from  iniquity. 
The  clergyman — poor  soul ! — cannot  help  being 
the  parson  of  the  parish.  He  is  there  like  the 
magistrate ;  he  is  a  national  officer  with  an  appointed 
function.  If  one  or  two  voluntary  performers,  dis- 
satisfied with  the  magisterial  system,  were  to  set 
themselves  up  in  each  parish  of  the  country,  called 
themselves  magistrates,  drew  a  certain  number  of 
people  to  their  own  way  of  thinking,  tried  differences 
and  gave  sentences  among  their  people  in  the  best 
fashion  they  could,  why,  probably  the  established 


xxil  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

magistrate  would  not  much  like  it,  the  leading  people 
in  the  parish  would  not  much  like  it,  and  the  new- 
comers would  have  mortifications  and  social  estrange- 
ments to  endure.  Probably  the  established  magis- 
trate would  call  them  interlopers ;  probably  he  would 
count  them  amongst  his  difficulties.  On  the  side  of 
the  newcomers  "a  spirit  of  watchful  jealousy,"  as 
Mr.  Winterbotham  says,  would  thus  be  created. 
The  public  interest  would  suffer  from  the  ill  blood 
and  confusion  prevailing.  The  established  magistrate 
might  naturally  say  that  the  newcomers  brought  the 
strife  and  disturbance  with  them.  But  who  would 
not  smile  at  these  lambs  answering:  "Away  with 
that  wolf  the  established  magistrate,  and  all  ground 
for  jealousy  and  quarrel  between  us  will  disappear !" 
And  it  is  a  grievance  that  the  clergyman  talks 
of  Dissent  as  one  of  the  spiritual  hindrances  in  his 
parish,  and  desires  to  get  rid  of  it !  Why,  by  Mr. 
Winterbotham's  own  showing,  the  Dissenters  live 
"in  a  spirit  of  watchful  jealousy,"  and  this  temper 
is  as  much  a  spiritual  hindrance, — nay,  in  the  view 
of  Christianity  it  is  even  a  more  direct  spiritual  hind- 
rance,— than  drunkenness  or  loose  living.  Chris- 
tianity is,  first  and  above  all,  a  temper,  a  disposition ; 
and  a  disposition  just  the  opposite  to  "a  spirit  of 
watchful  jealousy."  Once  admit  a  spirit  of  watchful 
jealousy,  and  Christianity  has  lost  its  virtue ;  it  is 
impotent.  All  the  other  vices  it  was  meant  to  keep 
out  may  rush  in.  Where  there  is  jealousy  and  strife 
among  you,  asks  St.  Paul,  are  ye  not  carnal  ? 1  are  ye 

1  1  Cor.  iii.  3. 


PREFACE.  xxiii 

not  still  in  bondage  to  your  mere  lower  selves  1  But 
from  this  bondage  Christianity  was  meant  to  free  us ; 
therefore,  says  he,  get  rid  of  what  causes  divisions, 
and  strife,  and  "a  spirit  of  watchful  jealousy."  "I 
exhort  you  by  the  name  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
that  ye  all  speak  the  same  thing,  and  that  there  be 
not  divisions  among  you,  but  that  ye  all  be  perfectly 
joined  in  the  same  mind  and  the  same  judgment."1 

Well,  but  why,  says  the  Dissenting  minister,  is 
the  clergyman  to  impress  St.  Paul's  words  upon  me 
rather  than  I  upon  the  clergyman?  Because  the 
clergyman  is  the  one  minister  of  Christ  in  the  parish 
who  did  not  invent  himself,  who  cannot  help  existing. 
He  is  not  asserting  his  ordinary  self  by  being  there ; 
he  is  placed  there  on  public  duty.  He  is  charged 
with  teaching  the  lesson  of  Christianity,  and  the 
head  and  front  of  this  lesson  is  to  get  rid  of  "a 
spirit  of  watchful  jealousy,"  which,  according  to  the 
Dissenter's  own  showing,  is  the  very  spirit  which 
accompanies  Dissent.  How  he  is  to  get  rid  of  it, 
how  he  is  to  win  souls  to  the  mildness  and  sweet 
reasonableness  of  Christ,  it  is  for  his  own  conscience 
to  tell  him.  Probably  he  will  best  do  it  by  never 
speaking  against  Dissent  at  all,  by  treating  Dissenters 
with  perfect  cordiality  and  as  if  there  was  not  a  point 
of  dispute  between  them.  But  that,  so  long  as  he 
exists,  it  is  his  duty  to  get  rid  of  it,  to  win  souls  to 
the  unity  which  is  its  opposite,  is  clear.  It  is  not  the 
Bishop  of  Winchester2  who  classes  Dissent,  full  of 
"a  spirit  of  watchful  jealousy,"  along  with  spiritual 

1  1  Cor.  i.  10.         2  The  late  Bishop  Wilberforce. 


xxiv  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

hindrances  like  beer-shops, — a  pollution  of  the  spirit 
along  with  pollutions  of  the  flesh;1  it  is  St.  Paul. 
It  is  not  the  clergyman  who  is  chargeable  with  wish- 
ing to  "stamp  out"  this  spirit;  it  is  the  Christian 
religion. 

But  what  is  to  prevent  the  Dissenting  minister 
from  being  joined  with  the  clergyman  in  the  same 
public  function,  and  being  his  partner  instead  of  his 
rival  ?  Episcopal  ordination.2  If  I  leave  the  service 
of  a  private  company,  and  enter  the  public  service, 
I  receive  admission  at  the  hands  of  the  public  officer 
designated  to  give  it  me.  Sentiment  and  the  historic 
sense,  to  say  nothing  of  the  religious  feeling,  will 
certainly  put  more  into  ordination  than  this,  though 
not  precisely  what  the  Bishop  of  Winchester,  per- 
haps, puts ;  this  which  we  have  laid  down,  however, 
is  really  all  which  the  law  of  the  land  puts  there. 
A  bishop  is  a  public  officer.  Why  should  I  trouble 
myself  about  the  name  his  office  bears  %  The  name 
of  his  office  cannot  affect  the  service  or  my  labour 
in  it.  Ah,  but,  says  Mr.  Winterbotham,  he  holds 
opinions  which   I  do  not  share  about   the  sort  of 

1  1  Cor.  vii.  1, 
2  It  has  been  inferred  from  what  is  here  said  that  we  propose 
to  make  re-ordination  a  condition  of  admitting  Dissenting  minis- 
ters to  the  ministry  of  the  Church  of  England.  Elsewhere  I 
have  said  how  undesirable  it  seems  to  impose  this  condition  ; 
and  to  what  respectful  treatment  and  fair  and  equal  terms,  in 
case  of  reunion,  Protestant  Nonconformity  is,  in  my  opinion, 
entitled.  See  the  Preface  to  Culture  and  Anarchy.  What  is 
said  in  the  text  is  directed  simply  against  the  objection  to  epis- 
copal ordination  as  something  wrong  in  itself  and  a  ground  for 
schism. 


PREFACE.  XXV 

character  he  confers  upon  me !  What  can  that 
matter,  unless  he  compels  you,  too,  to  profess  the 
same  opinions,  or  refuses  you  admission  if  you  do 
not?  But  I  should  be  joined  in  the  ministry  with 
men  who  hold  opinions  which  I  do  not  share  !  What 
does  that  matter  either,  unless  they  compel  you  also 
to  hold  these  opinions,  as  the  price  of  your  being 
allowed  to  work  on  the  foundation  :  Let  every  one  that 
nameth  the  name  of  Christ  depart  from  iniquity  ?  To 
recur  to  our  old  parallel.  It  is  as  if  a  man  who 
desired  the  office  of  a  public  magistrate  and  who 
was  fitted  for  it,  were  to  hold  off  because  he  had  to 
receive  institution  from  a  Lord-Lieutenant,  and  he 
did  not  like  the  title  of  Lord-Lieutenant ;  or  because 
the  Lord-Lieutenant  who  was  to  institute  him  had 
a  fancy  about  some  occult  quality  which  he  conferred 
on  him  at  institution ;  or  because  he  would  find  him- 
self, when  he  was  instituted,  one  of  a  body  of  magis- 
trates of  whom  many  had  notions  which  he  thought 
irrational.  The  office  itself,  and  his  own  power  to 
fill  it  usefully,  is  all  which  really  matters  to  him. 

The  Bishop  of  Winchester  believes  in  apostolical 
succession ; — therefore  there  must  be  Dissenters.  Mr. 
Liddon  asserts  the  real  presence ; — therefore  there 
must  be  Dissenters.  Mr.  Mackonochie  is  a  ritualist ; 
— therefore  there  must  be  Dissenters.  But  the  Bishop 
of  Winchester  cannot,  and  does  not,  exclude  from  the 
ministry  of  the  Church  of  England  those  who  do  not 
believe  in  apostolical  succession ;  and  surely  not  even 
that  acute  and  accomplished  personage  is  such  a 
magician,  that   he   can  make  a  Puritan  believe  in 


XXVI  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

apostolical  succession  merely  by  believing  in  it  him- 
self !  In  the  same  way,  eloquent  as  is  Mr.  Liddon, 
and  devoted  as  is  Mr.  Mackonochie,  their  gifts  cannot 
yield  them  the  art  of  so  swaying  a  brother  clergy- 
man's spirit  as  to  make  him  admit  the  real  presence 
against  his  conviction,  or  practise  ritualism  against 
his  will ;  and  official,  material  control  over  him,  or 
power  of  stipulating  what  he  shall  admit  or  practise, 
they  have  absolutely  none. 

But  can  anything  more  tend  to  make  the  Church 
what  the  Puritans  reproach  it  with  being,  a  mere 
lump  of  sacerdotalism  and  ritualism, — than  if  the 
Puritans,  who  are  free  to  come  into  with  their  dis- 
regard of  sacerdotalism  and  ritualism  and  so  to  leaven 
it,  refuse  to  come  in,  and  leave  it  wholly  to  the  sacer- 
dotalists  and  ritualists'?  What  can  be  harder  upon 
the  laity  of  the  national  Church,  what  so  incon- 
siderate of  the  national  good  and  advantage,  as  to 
leave  us  at  the  mercy  of  one  single  element  in  the 
Church,  and  deny  us  just  the  elements  fit  to  mix  with 
this  element  and  to  improve  it  1 

The  current  doctrines  of  apostolical  succession  and 
the  real  presence  seem  to  us  unsound  and  unedifying. 
To  be  sure,  so  does  the  current  doctrine  of  imputed 
righteousness.  For  us,  sacerdotalism  and  solifidian- 
ism  stand  both  on  the  same  footing ;  they  are,  both 
of  them,  erroneous  human  developments.  But  as  in 
the  ideas  and  practice  of  sacerdotalists  or  ritualists 
there  is  much  which  seems  to  us  of  value,  and  of 
great  use  to  the  Church,  so,  too,  in  the  ideas  and 
practice  of  Nonconformists  there  is  very  much  which 


PREFACE.  xxvil 

we  value.  To  take  points  only  that  are  beyond  con- 
troversy :  they  have  cultivated  the  gift  of  preaching 
much  more  than  the  clergy;  and  their  union  with  the 
Church  would  renovate  and  immensely  amend  Church 
preaching.  They  would  certainly  bring  with  them, 
if  they  came  back  into  the  Church,  some  use  of  what 
they  call  free  prayer  ;  to  which,  if  at  present  they  give 
far  too  much  place,  it  is  yet  to  be  regretted  that  the 
Church  gives  no  place  at  all.  Lastly,  if  the  body  of 
British  Protestant  Dissenters  is  in  the  main,  as  it 
undoubtedly  is,  the  Church  of  the  Philistines,  never- 
theless there  could  come  nothing  but  health  and 
strength  from  blending  this  body  with  the  Establish- 
ment, of  which  the  very  weakness  and  danger  is  that 
it  tends,  as  we  have  formerly  said,  to  be  an  appendage 
to  the  Barbarians. 

So  long  as  the  Puritans  thought  that  the  essence 
of  Christianity  was  their  doctrine  of  predestination  or 
of  justification,  it  was  natural  that  they  should  stand 
out,  at  any  cost,  for  this  essence.  That  is  why,  when 
the  "Zeit-Geist"  and  the  general  movement  of  men's 
religious  ideas  is  beginning  to  reveal  that  the  Puritan 
gospel  is  not  the  essence  of  Christianity,  we  have 
been  desirous  to  spread  this  revelation  to  the  best 
of  our  power,  and  by  all  the  aids  of  plain  popular 
exposition  to  help  it  forward.  Because,  when  once 
it  is  clear  that  the  essence  of  Christianity  is  not 
Puritan  solifidianism,  it  can  hardly  long  be  main- 
tained that  the  essence  of  Christianity  is  Puritan 
church-order.  When  once  the  way  is  made  clear, 
by  removing  the  solifidian  heresy,  to  look  and  see 


XXVlll  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

what  the  essence  of  Christianity  really  is,  it  cannot 
but  soon  force  itself  upon  our  minds  that  the  essence 
of  Christianity  is  something  not  very  far,  at  any 
rate,  from  this :  Grace  and  peace  by  the  annulment  of 
our  ordinary  self  through  the  mildness  and  sweet  reason- 
ableness of  Jesus  Christ.  This  is  the  more  particular 
description  of  that  general  ground,  already  laid  down, 
of  the  Christian  Church's  existence  :  Let  every  one  that 
nameth  the  name  of  Christ  depart  from  iniquity.  If  this 
general  ground,  particularised  in  the  way  above  given, 
is  not  "  the  sincere  milk  "  of  the  evangelical  word,  it 
is,  at  all  events,  something  very  like  it.  And  matters 
of  machinery  and  outward  form,  like  church -order, 
have  not  only  nothing  essentially  to  do  with  the  sin- 
cere milk  of  Christianity,  but  are  the  very  matters 
about  which  this  sincere  milk  should  make  us  easy 
and  yielding. 

If  there  were  no  national  and  historic  form  of 
church-order  in  possession,  a  genuine  Christian  would 
regret  having  to  spend  time  and  thought  in  shaping 
one,  in  having  so  to  encumber  himself  with  serving, 
to  busy  himself  so  much  about  a  frame  for  his  reli- 
gious life  as  well  as  about  the  contents  of  the  frame. 
After  all,  a  man  has  only  a  certain  sum  of  force  to 
spend ;  and  if  he  takes  a  quantity  of  it  for  outward 
things,  he  has  so  much  the  less  left  for  inward  things. 
It  is  hardly  to  be  believed,  how  much  larger  a  space 
the  mere  affairs  of  his  denomination  fill  in  the  time 
and  thoughts  of  a  Dissenter,  than  in  the  time  and 
thoughts  of  a  Churchman.  Now  all  machinery-work 
of  this  kind  is,  to  a  man  filled  with  a  real  love  of  the 


PREFACE.  xxix 

essence  of  Christianity,  something  of  a  hindrance  to 
him  in  what  he  most  wants  to  be  at,  something  of  a 
concession  to  his  ordinary  self.  When  an  established 
and  historic  form  exists,  such  a  man  should  be,  there- 
fore, disposed  to  use  it  and  comply  with  it.  But, — 
as  if  it  were  not  satisfied  with  proving  its  unprofit- 
ableness by  corroding  us  with  jealousy  and  so  robbing 
us  of  the  mildness  and  sweet  reasonableness  of  Christ, 
which  is  our  mainstay, — political  Dissent,  Dissent  for 
the  sake  of  church -polity  and  church -management, 
proves  it,  too,  by  stimulating  our  ordinary  self  through 
over-care  for  what  natters  this.  In  fact,  what  is  it 
that  the  everyday,  middle -class  Philistine,  —  not  the 
rare  flower  of  the  Dissenters  but  the  common  staple, 
— finds  so  attractive  in  Dissent  "2  Is  it  not,  as  to  dis- 
cipline, that  his  self-importance  is  fomented  by  the 
fuss,  bustle,  and  partisanship  of  a  private  sect,  instead 
of  being  lost  in  the  greatness  of  a  public  body  %  As 
to  worship,  is  it  not  that  his  taste  is  pleased  by  usages 
and  words  that  come  down  to  him,  instead  of  drawing 
him  up  to  them ;  by  services  which  reflect,  instead  of 
the  culture  of  great  men  of  religious  genius,  the  crude 
culture  of  himself  and  his  fellows  ?  And  as  to  doc- 
trine, is  it  not  that  his  mind  is  pleased  at  hearing  no 
opinion  but  its  own,  by  having  all  disputed  points 
taken  for  granted  in  its  own  favour,  by  being  urged 
to  no  return  upon  itself,  no  development1?  And 
what  is  all  this  but  the  very  feeding  and  stimulating 
of  our  ordinary  self,  instead  of  the  annulling  of  it  1 
No  doubt  it  is  natural ;  to  indulge  our  ordinary  self 
is  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world.     But  Chris- 


XXX  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

tianity  is  not  natural ;  and  if  the  flower  of  Christianity 
be  the  grace  and  peace  which  comes  of  annulling  our 
ordinary  self,  then  to  this  flower  it  is  fatal. 

So  that  if,  in  order  to  gratify  in  the  Dissenters 
one  of  the  two  faults  against  which  Christianity  is 
chiefly  aimed,  a  jealous,  contentious  spirit,  we  were 
to  sweep  away  our  national  and  historic  form  of 
religion,  and  were  all  to  tinker  at  our  own  forms,  we 
should  then  just  be  flattering  the  other  chief  fault 
which  Christianity  came  to  cure,  and  serving  our 
ordinary  self  instead  of  annulling  it.  What  a  happy 
furtherance  to  religion ! 

For  my  part,  so  far  as  the  best  of  the  Noncon- 
formist ministers  are  concerned,  of  whom  I  know 
something,  I  disbelieve  Mr.  Winterbotham's  hideous 
confession.  I  imagine  they  are  very  little  pleased 
with  him  for  making  it.  I  do  not  believe  that  they, 
at  any  rate,  live  in  the  ulcerated  condition  he  describes, 
fretting  with  watchful  jealousy.  I  believe  they  have 
other  things  to  think  of.  But  why  1  Because  they 
are  men  of  genius  and  character,  who  react  against 
the  harmful  influences  of  the  position  in  which  they 
find  themselves  placed,  and  surmount  its  obvious 
dangers.  But  their  genius  and  character  might  serve 
them  still  better  if  they  were  placed  in  a  less  trying 
position.  And  the  rank  and  file  of  their  ministers 
and  people  do  yield  to  the  influences  of  their  position. 
Of  these,  Mr.  Winterbotham's  picture  is  perfectly 
true.  They  are  more  and  more  jealous  for  their 
separate  organisation,  pleased  with  the  bustle  and 
self-importance  which    its  magnitude   brings  them, 


PREFACE.  XXXI 

irritably  alive  to  whatever  reduces  or  effaces  it; 
bent,  in  short,  on  affirming  their  ordinary  selves. 
However  much  the  chiefs  may  feel  the  truth  of 
modern  ideas,  may  grow  moderate,  may  perceive 
the  effects  of  religious  separatism  upon  worship  and 
doctrine,  they  will  probably  avail  little  or  nothing ; 
the  head  will  be  overpowered  and  out-clamoured  by 
the  tail.  The  Wesleyans,  who  used  always  to  refuse 
to  call  themselves  Dissenters,  whose  best  men  still 
shrink  from  the  name,  the  Wesleyans,  a  wing  of  the 
Church,  founded  for  godliness,  the  Wesleyans  more 
and  more,  with  their  very  growth  as  a  separate  deno- 
mination, feel  the  secular  ambition  of  being  great  as 
a  denomination,  of  being  effaced  by  nobody,  of  giving 
contentment  to  this  self-importance,  of  indulging  this 
ordinary  self;  and  I  should  not  wonder  if  within 
twenty  years  they  were  keen  political  Dissenters.  A 
triumph  of  Puritanism  is  abundantly  possible ;  we 
have  never  denied  it.  What  we,  whose  greatest  care 
is  neither  for  the  Church  nor  for  Puritanism,  but  for 
human  perfection,  what  we  labour  to  show  is,  that 
the  triumph  of  Puritanism  will  be  the  triumph  of 
our  ordinary  self,  not  the  triumph  of  Christianity; 
and  that  the  type  of  Hebraism  it  will  establish  is  one 
in  which  neither  general  human  perfection,  nor  yet 
Hebraism  itself,  can  truly  find  their  account. 

Elsewhere  we  have  drawn  out  a  distinction 
between  Hebraism  and  Hellenism,1 — between  the 
tendency  and  powers  that  carry  us  towards  doing, 
and  the  tendency  and  powers  that  carry  us  towards 

1  See  Culture  and  Anarchy  (2d  edition),  chap.  iv. 


xxxii  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

perceiving  and  knowing.  Hebraism,  we  said,  has 
long  been  overwhelmingly  preponderant  with  us. 
The  sacred  book  which  we  call  the  Word  of  God,  and 
which  most  of  us  study  far  more  than  any  other 
book,  serves  Hebraism.  Moses  Hebraises,  David 
Hebraises,  Isaiah  Hebraises,  Paul  Hebraises,  John 
Hebraises.  Jesus  Christ  himself  is,  as  St.  Paul  truly 
styles  him,  "  a  minister  of  the  circumcision  to  the  truth 
of  God."  1  That  is,  it  is  by  our  powers  of  moral 
action,  and  through  the  perfecting  of  these,  that 
Christ  leads  us  "to  be  partakers  of  the  divine 
nature."  2  By  far  our  chief  machinery  for  spiritual 
purposes  has  the  like  aim  and  character.  Throughout 
Europe  this  is  so.  But,  to  speak  of  ourselves  only, 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  is  an  agent  of  Hebraism, 
the  Archbishop  of  York  is  an  agent  of  Hebraism, 
Archbishop  Manning  is  an  Agent  of  Hebraism,  the 
President  of  the  Wesleyan  Conference  is  an  agent  of 
Hebraism,  all  the  body  of  Church  clergy  and  Dissent- 
ing ministers  are  agents  of  Hebraism.  Now,  we  have 
seen  how  we  are  beginning  visibly  to  suffer  harm 
from  attending  in  this  one-sided  way  to  Hebraism, 
and  how  we  are  called  to  develop  ourselves  more  in 
our  totality,  on  our  perceptive  and  intelligential  side 
as  well  as  on  our  moral  side.  If  it  is  said  that  this 
is  a  very  hard  matter,  and  that  man  cannot  well  do 
more  than  one  thing  at  a  time,  the  answer  is  that 
here  is  the  very  sign  and  condition  of  each  new  stage 
of  spiritual  progress, — increase  of  task  The  more  we 
grow,  the  greater  is  the  task  which  is  given  us.     This 

1  Romans  xv.  8.  2  2  Peter  i.  4. 


PREFACE.  xxxiii 

is  the  law  of  man's  nature  and  of  his  spirit's  history. 
The  powers  we  have  developed  at  our  old  task  enable 
us  to  attempt  a  new  one  ;  and  this,  again,  brings  with 
it  a  new  increase  of  powers. 

Hebraism  strikes  too  exclusively  upon  one  string 
in  us.  Hellenism  does  not  address  itself  with  serious 
energy  enough  to  morals  and  righteousness.  For  our 
totality,  for  our  general  perfection,  we  need  to  unite 
the  two ;  now  the  two  are  easily  at  variance.  In 
their  lower  forms  they  are  irreconcilably  at  vari- 
ance; only  when  each  of  them  is  at  its  best,  is  their 
harmony  possible.  Hebraism  at  its  best  is  beauty 
and  charm ;  Hellenism  at  its  best  is  also  beauty  and 
charm.  As  such  they  can  unite ;  as  anything  short 
of  this,  each  of  them,  they  are  at  discord,  and  their 
separation  must  continue.  The  flower  of  Hellenism 
is  a  kind  of  amiable  grace  and  artless  winning  good- 
nature, born  out  of  the  perfection  of  lucidity,  sim- 
plicity, and  natural  truth  ;  the  flower  of  Christianity 
is  grace  and  peace  by  the  annulment  of  our  ordinary 
self  through  the  mildness  and  sweet  reasonableness 
of  Christ.  Both  are  eminently  humane,  and  for  com- 
plete human  perfection  both  are  required ;  the  second 
being  the  perfection  of  that  side  in  us  which  is  moral 
and  acts,  the  first,  of  that  side  in  us  which  is  in- 
telligential  and  perceives  and  knows. 

But  lower  forms  of  Hebraism  and  Hellenism  tend 
always  to  make  their  appearance,  and  to  strive  to 
establish  themselves.  On  one  of  these  forms  of 
Hebraism  we  have  been  commenting  ; — a  form  which 
had    its    first    origin,    no    doubt,    in    that    body    of 

VOL.  VII.  C 


XXXI V  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

impulses  whereby  we  Hebraise,  but  which  lands  us 
at  last,  not  in  the  mildness  and  sweet  reasonableness 
of  Christ,  but  in  "  a  spirit  of  watchful  jealousy." 
We  have  to  thank  Mr.  Winterbotham  for  fixing  our 
attention  on  it ;  but  we  prefer  to  name  it  from  an 
eminent  and  able  man  who  is  well  known  as  the 
earnest  apostle  of  the  Dissidence  of  Dissent  and  the 
Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion,  and  to  call 
it  Mialism.  Mialism  is  a  sub-form  of  Hebraism,  and 
itself  a  somewhat  spurious  and  degenerated  form ; 
but  this  sub-form  always  tends  to  degenerate  into 
forms  lower  yet,  and  yet  more  unworthy  of  the  ideal 
flower  of  Hebraism.  In  one  of  these  its  further 
stages  we  have  formerly  traced  it,  and  we  need  not 
enlarge  on  them  here.1 

Hellenism,  in  the  same  way,  has  its  more  or  less 
spurious  and  degenerated  sub-forms,  products  which 
may  be  at  once  known  as  degenerations  by  their 
deflection  from  what  we  have  marked  as  the  flower 
of  Hellenism, — "  a  kind  of  humane  grace  and  artless 
winning  good -nature,  born  out  of  the  perfection  of 
lucidity,  simplicity,  and  natural  truth."  And  from 
whom  can  we  more  properly  derive  a  general  name 
for  these  degenerations,  than  from  that  distinguished 
man,  who,  by  his  intelligence  and  accomplishments,  is 
in  many  respects  so  admirable  and  so  truly  Hellenic, 
but  whom  his  dislike  for  "  the  dominant  sect,"  as  he 
calls  the  Church  of  England, — the  Church  of  England, 
in  many  aspects  so  beautiful,  calming,  and  attaching, 
— seems  to  transport  with  an  almost  feminine  vehe- 

1  See  Culture  and  Anarchy  (2d  edition),  chap.  ii. 


PREFACE.  XXXV 

mence  of  irritation1?  What  can  we  so  fitly  name  the 
somewhat  degenerated  and  inadequate  form  of  Hellen- 
ism as  Millism  ?  This  is  the  Hellenic  or  Hellenistic 
counterpart  of  Mialism ;  and  like  Mialism  it  has  its 
further  degenerations,  in  which  it  is  still  less  com- 
mendable than  in  its  first  form.  For  instance,  what 
in  Mr.  Mill  is  but  a  yielding  to  a  spirit  of  irritable 
injustice,  goes  on  and  worsens  in  some  of  his  dis- 
ciples, till  it  becomes  a  sort  of  mere  blatancy  and 
truculent  hardness  in  certain  Millites,  in  whom  there 
appears  scarcely  anything  that  is  truly  sound  or 
Hellenic  at  all. 

Mankind,  however,  must  needs  draw,  however 
slowly,  towards  its  perfection ;  and  our  only  real 
perfection  is  our  totality.  Mialism  and  Millism  we 
may  see  playing  into  one  another's  hands,  and  appa- 
rently acting  together;  but,  so  long  as  these  lower 
forms  of  Hellenism  and  Hebraism  prevail,  the  real 
union  between  Hellenism  and  Hebraism  can  never 
be  accomplished,  and  our  totality  is  still  as  far  off 
as  ever.  Unhappy  and  unquiet  alternations  of 
ascendency  between  Hebraism  and  Hellenism  are 
all  that  we  shall  see ; — at  one  time,  the  indestruc- 
tible religious  experience  of  mankind  asserting  itself 
blindly;  at  another,  a  revulsion  of  the  intellect  of 
mankind  from  this  experience,  because  of  the  auda- 
cious assumptions  and  gross  inaccuracies  with  which 
men's  account  of  it  is  intermingled. 

At  present  it  is  such  a  revulsion  which  seems 
chiefly  imminent.  Give  the  churches  of  Noncon- 
formity   free  scope,   cries   an    ardent   Congregation- 


XXXVl  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

alist,  and  we  will  renew  the  wonders  of  the  first 
times ;  we  will  confront  this  modern  bugbear  of 
physical  science,  show  how  hollow  she  is,  and  how 
she  contradicts  herself !  In  his  mind's  eye,  this 
Nonconforming  enthusiast  already  sees  Professor 
Huxley  in  a  white  sheet,  brought  up  at  the  Surrey 
Tabernacle  between  two  deacons, — whom  that  great 
physicist,  in  his  own  clear  and  nervous  language, 
would  no  doubt  describe  like  his  disinterred  Roman 
the  other  day  at  Westminster  Abbey,  as  "of  weak 
mental  organisation  and  strong  muscular  frame," — 
and  penitently  confessing  that  Science  contradicts 
herself.  Alas,  the  real  future  is  likely  to  be  very 
different !  Rather  are  we  likely  to  witness  an 
edifying  solemnity,  where  Mr.  Mill,  assisted  by  his 
youthful  henchmen  and  apparitors,  will  burn  all  the 
Prayer  Books.  Rather  will  the  time  come,  as  it  has 
been  foretold,  when  we  shall  desire  to  see  one  of  the 
days  of  the  Son  of  Man,  and  shall  not  see  it ;  when 
the  mildness  and  sweet  reasonableness  of  Jesus 
Christ,  as  a  power  to  work  the  annulment  of  our 
ordinary  self,  will  be  clean  disregarded  and  out  of 
mind.  Then,  perhaps,  will  come  another  reaction, 
and  another,  and  another ;  and  all  sterile. 

Therefore  it  is,  that  we  labour  to  make  Hebraism 
raise  itself  above  Mialism,  find  its  true  self,  show 
itself  in  its  beauty  and  power,  and  help,  not  hinder, 
man's  totality.  The  endeavour  will  very  likely  be 
in  vain ;  for  growth  is  slow  and  the  ages  are  long, 
and  it  may  well  be  that  for  harmonising  Hebraism 
with  Hellenism  more  preparation  is  needed  than  man 


PREFACE.  XXXV11 

has  yet  had.  But  failures  do  something,  as  well  as 
successes,  towards  the  final  achievement.  The  cup 
of  cold  water  could  be  hardly  more  than  an  ineffective 
effort  at  succour ;  yet  it  counted.  To  disengage  the 
religion  of  England  from  unscriptural  Protestantism, 
political  Dissent,  and  a  spirit  of  watchful  jealousy, 
may  be  an  aim  not  in  our  day  reachable ;  and  still 
it  is  well  to  level  at  it. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

St.  Paul  and  Protestantism  .  1 

Puritanism  and  the  Church  of  England    .  101 


ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 

i. 

M.  Renan  sums  up  his  interesting  volume  on  St. 
Paul  by  saying: — "After  having  been  for  three 
hundred  years,  thanks  to  Protestantism,  the  Christian 
doctor  par  excellence,  Paul  is  now  coming  to  an  end  of 
his  reign."  All  through  his  book  M.  Renan  is  pos- 
sessed with  a  sense  of  this  close  relationship  between 
St.  Paul  and  Protestantism.  Protestantism  has  made 
Paul,  he  says ;  Pauline  doctrine  is  identified  with 
Protestant  doctrine ;  Paul  is  a  Protestant  doctor,  and 
the  counterpart  of  Luther.  M.  Renan  has  a  strong 
distaste  for  Protestantism,  and  this  distaste  extends 
itself  to  the  Protestant  Paul.  The  reign  of  this  Pro- 
testant is  now  coming  to  an  end,  and  such  a  consum- 
mation evidently  has  M.  Renan's  approval. 

St.  Paul  is  now  coming  to  an  end  of  his  reign.  Pre- 
cisely the  contrary,  I  venture  to  think,  is  the  judg- 
ment to  which  a  true  criticism  of  men  and  of  things, 
in  our  own  country  at  any  rate,  leads  us.  The  Pro- 
testantism which  has  so  used  and  abused  St.  Paul  is 
coming  to  an  end ;  its  organisations,  strong  and  active 
as  they  look,  are  touched  with  the  finger  of  death  ; 

VOL.  VII.  *  B 


2  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

its  fundamental  ideas,  sounding  forth  still  every  week 
from  thousands  of  pulpits,  have  in  them  no  signifi- 
cance and  no  power  for  the  progressive  thought  of 
bumanitj .  But  the  reign  of  the  real  St.  Paul  is  only 
beginning;  his  fundamental  ideas,  disengaged  from 
the  elaborate  misconceptions  with  which  Protestantism 
has  overlaid  them,  will  have  an  influence  in  the  future 
greater  than  any  which  they  have  yet  had, — an  influ- 
ence proportioned  to  their  correspondence  with  a 
number  of  the  deepest  and  most  permanent  facts  of 
human  nature  itself. 

Elsewhere1  I  have  pointed  out  how,  for  us  in  this 
country,  Puritanism  is  the  strong  and  special  repre- 
sentative of  Protestantism.  The  Church  of  England 
existed  before  Protestantism,  and  contains  much 
besides  Protestantism.  Remove  the  schemes  of  doc- 
trine, Calvinistic  or  Arminian,  which  for  Protestantism, 
merely  as  such,  have  made  the  very  substance  of  its 
religion,  and  all  that  is  most  valuable  in  the  Church 
of  England  would  still  remain.  These  schemes,  or 
the  ideas  out  of  which  they  spring,  show  themselves 
in  the  Prayer  Book ;  but  they  are  not  what  gives  the 
Prayer  Book  its  importance  and  value.  But  Puritan- 
ism exists  for  the  sake  of  these  schemes ;  its  organisa- 
tions are  inventions  for  enforcing  them  more  purely 
and  thoroughly.  Questions  of  discipline  and  cere- 
monies have,  originally  at  least,  been  always  admitted 
to  be  in  themselves  secondary ;  it  is  because  that 
conception  of  the  ways  of  God  to  man  which  Puritan- 
ism has  formed  for  itself   appeared   to   Puritanism 

1  See  Culture  and  Anarchy,  chap.  iv. 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  3 

superlatively  true  and  precious,  that  Independents 
and  Baptists  and  Methodists  in  England,  and  Pres- 
byterians in  Scotland,  have  been  impelled  to  constitute 
for  inculcating  it  a  church-order  where  it  might  be 
less  swamped  by  the  additions  and  ceremonies  of 
men,  might  be  more  simply  and  effectively  enounced, 
and  might  stand  more  absolute  and  central,  than  in 
the  church-order  of  Anglicans  or  Roman  Catholics. 

Of  that  conception  the  cardinal  points  are  fixed  by 
the  terms  election  and  justification.  These  terms  come 
from  the  writings  of  St.  Paul,  and  the  scheme  which 
Puritanism  has  constructed  with  them  professes  to  be 
St.  Paul's  scheme.  The  same  scheme,  or  something- 
very  like  it,  has  been,  and  still  is,  embraced  by  many 
adherents  of  the  Churches  of  England  and  Rome ; 
but  these  Churches  rest  their  claims  to  men's  interest 
and  attachment  not  on  the  possession  of  such  a 
scheme,  but  on  other  grounds  with  which  we  have 
for  the  present  nothing  to  do.  Puritanism's  very 
reason  for  existing  depends  on  the  worth  of  this  its 
vital  conception,  derived  from  St.  Paul's  writings ; 
and  when  we  are  told  that  St.  Paul  is  a  Protestant 
doctor  whose  reign  is  ending,  a  Puritan,  keen,  pugna- 
cious, and  sophisticating  simple  religion  of  the  heart 
into  complicated  theories  of  the  brain  about  election 
and  justification,  we  in  England,  at  any  rate,  can  best 
try  the  assertion  by  fixing  our  eyes  on  our  own 
Puritans,  and  comparing  their  doctrine  and  their  hold 
on  vital  truth  with  St.  Paul's. 

This  we  propose  now  to  do,  and,  indeed,  to  do  it 
will  only  be  to  complete  what  we  have  already  begun. 


4  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

For  already,  when  we  were  speaking  of  Hebraism 
and  Hellenism,1  we  were  led  to  remark  how  the  over- 
Hebraising  of  Puritanism,  and  its  want  of  a  wide 
culture,  do  so  narrow  its  range  and  impair  its  vision 
that  even  the  documents  which  it  thinks  all-sufficient, 
and  to  the  study  of  which  it  exclusively  rivets  itself, 
it  does  not  rightly  understand,  but  is  apt  to  make  of 
them  something  quite  different  from  what  they  really 
are.  In  short,  no  man,  we  said,  who  knows  nothing 
else,  knows  even  his  Bible.  And  we  showed  how 
readers  of  the  Bible  attached  to  essential  words  and 
ideas  of  the  Bible  a  sense  which  was  not  the  writer's ; 
and  in  particular  how  this  had  happened  with  regard 
to  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  resurrection.  Let  us  take 
the  present  opportunity  of  going  further  in  the  same 
road;  and  instead  of  lightly  disparaging  the  great 
name  of  St.  Paul,  let  us  see  if  the  needful  thing  is  not 
rather  to  rescue  St.  Paul  and  the  Bible  from  the  per- 
versions of  them  by  mistaken  men. 

So  long  as  the  well-known  habit,  on  which  we 
have  so  often  enlarged,  prevails  amongst  our  country- 
men, of  holding  mechanically  their  ideas  themselves, 
but  making  it  their  chief  aim  to  work  with  energy 
and  enthusiasm  for  the  organisations  which  profess 
those  ideas,  English  Puritanism  is  not  likely  to  make 
such  a  return  upon  its  own  thoughts,  and  upon  the 
elements  of  its  being,  as  to  accomplish  for  itself  an 
operation  of  the  kind  needed;  though  it  has  men 
whose  natural  faculties,  were  they  but  free  to  use 
them,  would  undoubtedly  prove  equal  to  the  task. 

1  See  Culture  and  Anarchy,  chap.  v. 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  5 

The  same  habit  prevents  our  Puritans  from  being 
reached  by  philosophical  works,  which  exist  in  suffi- 
cient numbers  and  of  which  M.  Eeuss's  history  of  the 
growth  of  Christian  theology1  is  an  admirable  speci- 
men,— works  where  the  entire  scheme  of  Pauline 
doctrine  is  laid  out  with  careful  research  and  impartial 
accuracy.  To  give  effect  to  the  predominant  points 
in  Paul's  teaching,  and  to  exhibit  these  in  so  plain 
and  popular  a  manner  as  to  invite  and  almost  compel 
men's  comprehension,  is  not  the  design  of  such  works ; 
and  only  by  writings  with  this  design  in  view  will 
English  Puritanism  be  reached. 

Our  one  qualification  for  the  business  in  hand  lies 
in  that  belief  of  ours,  so  much  contested  by  our 
countrymen,  of  the  primary  needfulness  of  seeing 
things  as  they  really  are,  and  of  the  greater  import- 
ance of  ideas  than  of  the  machinery  which  exists  for 
them.  If  by  means  of  letting  our  consciousness  work 
quite  freely,  and  by  following  the  methods  of  study- 
ing and  judging  thence  generated,  we  are  shown  that 
we  ought  in  real  truth  neither  to  abase  St.  Paul  and 
Puritanism  together,  as  M.  Renan  does,  nor  to  abase 
St.  Paul  but  exalt  Puritanism,  nor  yet  to  exalt  both 
Puritanism  and  St.  Paul  together,  but  rather  to  abase 
Puritanism  and  exalt  St.  Paul,  then  we  cannot  but 
think  that  even  for  Puritanism  itself,  also,  it  will  be 
the  best,  however  unpalatable,  to  be  shown  this. 
Puritanism  certainly  wishes  well  to  St.  Paul ;  it  can- 

1  Histoire  de  la  TMologic  Chrttienne  au  Sttcle  Apostoliqiic, 
par  Edouard  Reuss  ;  Strasbourg  et  Paris  (in  2  vols.  8vo. )  There 
is  now  (1875)  an  English  translation  of  M.  Reuss's  work. 


6  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

not  wish  to  compromise  him  by  an  unintelligent 
adhesion  to  him  and  a  blind  adoption  of  his  words, 
instead  of  being  a  true  child  to  him.  Yet  this  is 
what  it  has  really  done.  What  in  St.  Paul  is  second- 
ary and  subordinate,  Puritanism  has  made  primary 
and  essential ;  what  in  St.  Paul  is  figure  and  belongs 
to  the  sphere  of  feeling,  Puritanism  has  transported 
into  the  sphere  of  intellect  and  made  formula.  On 
the  other  hand,  what  is  with  St.  Paul  primary,  Puri- 
tanism has  treated  as  subordinate :  and  what  is 
with  him  thesis,  and  belonging  (so  far  as  anything  in 
religion  can  properly  be  said  thus  to  belong)  to  the 
sphere  of  intellect,  Puritanism  has  made  image  and 
figure. 

And  first  let  us  premise  what  we  mean  in  this 
matter  by  primary  and  secondary,  essential  and  sub- 
ordinate. We  mean,  so  far  as  the  apostle  is  con- 
cerned, a  greater  or  less  approach  to  what  really 
characterises  him  and  gives  his  teaching  its  originality 
and  power.  We  mean,  so  far  as  truth  is  concerned, 
a  greater  or  less  agreement  with  facts  which  can  be 
verified,  and  a  greater  or  less  power  of  explaining 
them.  What  essentially  characterises  a  religious 
teacher,  and  gives  him  his  permanent  worth  and 
vitality,  is,  after  all,  just  the  scientific  value  of  his 
teaching,  its  correspondence  with  important  facts, 
and  the  light  it  throws  on  them.  Never  was  the 
truth  of  this  so  evident  as  now.  The  scientific  sense 
in  man  never  asserted  its  claim  so  strongly  •  the  pro- 
pensity of  religion  to  neglect  those  claims,  and  the 
peril  and  loss  to  it  from  neglecting  them,  never  were 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  7 

so  manifest.  The  license  of  affirmation  about  God 
and  his  proceedings,  in  which  the  religious  world  in- 
dulge, is  more  and  more  met  by  the  demand  for  veri- 
fication. When  Calvinism  tells  us  :  "  It  is  agreed 
between  God  and  the  Mediator  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son 
of  God,  surety  for  the  redeemed,  as  parties-contrac- 
tors, that  the  sins  of  the  redeemed  should  be  imputed 
to  innocent  Christ,  and  he  both  condemned  and  put 
to  death  for  them,  upon  this  very  condition,  that 
whosoever  heartily  consents  unto  the  covenant  of  re- 
conciliation offered  through  Christ,  shall,  by  the 
imputation  of  his  obedience  unto  them,  be  justified 
and  holden  righteous  before  God  ; " — when  Calvinism 
tells  us  this,  is  it  not  talking  about  God  just  as  if  he 
were  a  man  in  the  next  street,  whose  proceedings 
Calvinism  intimately  knew  and  could  give  account  of, 
could  verify  that  account  at  any  moment,  and  enable 
us  to  verify  it  also  %  It  is  true,  when  the  scientific 
sense  in  us,  the  sense  which  seeks  exact  knowledge, 
calls  for  that  verification,  Calvinism  refers  us  to  St. 
Paul,  from  whom  it  professes  to  have  got  this  history 
of  what  it  calls  "  the  covenant  of  redemption."  But 
this  is  only  pushing  the  difficulty  a  stage  further 
back.  For  if  it  is  St.  Paul,  and  not  Calvinism,  that 
professes  this  exact  acquaintance  with  God  and  his 
doings,  the  scientific  sense  calls  upon  St.  Paul  to  pro- 
duce the  facts  by  which  he  verifies  what  he  says ;  and 
if  he  cannot  produce  them,  then  it  treats  both  St. 
Paul's  assertion,  and  Calvinism's  assertion  after  him, 
as  of  no  real  consequence. 

No  one  will  deny  that  such  is  the  behaviour  of 


8  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

science  towards  religion  in  our  day,  though  many  may 
deplore  it.  And  it  is  not  that  the  scientific  sense  in 
us  denies  the  rights  of  the  poetic  sense,  which  em- 
ploys a  figured  and  imaginative  language.  But  the 
language  we  have  just  been  quoting  is  not  figurative 
and  poetic  language,  it  is  scholastic  and  scientific 
language.  Assertions  in  scientific  language  must 
stand  the  tests  of  scientific  examination.  Neither  is 
it  that  the  scientific  sense  in  us  refuses  to  admit 
willingly  and  reverently  the  name  of  God,  as  a  point 
in  which  the  religious  and  the  scientific  sense  may 
meet,  as  the  least  inadequate  name  for  that  universal 
order  which  the  intellect  feels  after  as  a  law,  and  the 
heart  feels  after  as  a  benefit.  "  We,  too,"  might  the 
men  of  science  with  truth  say  to  the  men  of  religion 
— "  we,  too,  would  gladly  say  God,  if  only,  the 
moment  one  says  God,  youiwould  not  pester  onejwith 
your  pretensions  of  knowing  all  about  him."  That 
stream  of  tendency  by  which  all  things  strive  to  fulfil  the 
law  of  their  being,  and  which,  inasmuch  as  our  idea  of 
real  welfare  resolves  itself  into  this  fulfilment  of  the 
law  of  one's  being,  man  rightly  deems  the  fountain  of 
all  goodness,  and  calls  by  the  worthiest  and  most 
solemn  name  he  can,  which  is  God,  science  also  might 
willingly  own  for  the  fountain  of  all  goodness,  and 
call  God.  But  however  much  more  than  this  the 
heart  may  with  propriety  put  into  its  language  re- 
specting God,  this  is  as  much  as  science  can  with 
strictness  put  there.  Therefore,  when  the  religious 
world,  following  its  bent  of  trying  to  describe  what  it 
loves,  amplifying  and  again  amplifying  its  description, 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  9 

and  guarding  finally  this  amplified  description  by  the 
most  precise  and  rigid  terms  it  can  find,  comes  at  last, 
with  the  best  intentions,  to  the  notion  of  a  sort  of 
magnified  and  non-natural  man,  who  proceeds  in  the 
fashion  laid  down  in  the  Calvinistic  thesis  we  have 
quoted,  then  science  strikes  in,  remarks  the  differ- 
ence between  this  second  notion  and  the  notion  it 
originally  admitted,  and  demands  to  have  the  new, 
notion  verified,  as  the  first  can  be  verified,  by 
facts.     But  this  does  not  unsettle  the  first  notion, 


or  prevent  science  from  acknowledging  the  import- 
ance and  the  scientific  validity  of  propositions  which 
are  grounded  upon  the  first  notion,  and  shed  light 
over  it. 

Nevertheless,  researches  in  this  sphere  are  now  a 
good  deal  eclipsed  in  popularity  by  researches  in  the 
sphere  of  physics,  and  no  longer  have  the  vogue  which 
they  once  had.  I  have  related  how  an  eminent 
physicist  with  whose  acquaintance  I  am  honoured, 
imagines  me  to  have  invented  the  author  of  the  Sacra 
Privata  ;  and  that  fashionable  newspaper,  the  Morning 
Post,  undertaking, — as  I  seemed,  it  said,  very  anxious 
about  the  matter, — to  supply  information  as  to  who 
the  author  really  was,  laid  it  down  that  he  was  Bishop 
of  Calcutta,  and  that  his  ideas  and  writings,  to  which 
I  attached  so  much  value,  had  been  among  the  main 
provocatives  of  the  Indian  mutiny.  Therefore  it  is 
perhaps  expedient  to  refresh  our  memory  as  to  these 
schemes  of  doctrine,  Calvinistic  or  Arminian,  for  the 
upholding  of  which,  as  has  been  said,  British  Puri- 
tanism exists,  before  we  proceed  to  compare  them,  for 


10  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

correspondence  with  facts  and  for  scientific  validity, 
with  the  teaching  of  St.  Paul. 

Calvinism,  then,  begins  by  laying  down  that  God 
from  all  eternity  decreed  whatever  was  to  come  to 
pass  in  time ;  that  by  his  decree  a  certain  number 
of  angels  and  men  are  predestinated,  out  of  God's 
mere  free  grace  and  love,  without  any  foresight  of 
faith  or  good  works  in  them,  to  everlasting  life  ;  and 
others  foreordained,  according  to  the  unsearchable 
counsel  of  his  will,  whereby  he  extends  or  withholds 
mercy  as  he  pleases,  to  everlasting  death.  God  made, 
however,  our  first  parents,  Adam  and  Eve,  upright 
and  able  to  keep  his  law,  which  was  written  in  their 
hearts ;  at  the  same  time  entering  into  a  contract 
with  them,  and  with  their  posterity  as  represented  in 
them,  by  which  they  were  assured  of  everlasting  life 
in  return  for  perfect  obedience,  and  of  everlasting 
death  if  they  should  be  disobedient.  Our  first 
parents,  being  enticed  by  Satan,  a  fallen  angel  speak- 
ing in  the  form  of  a  serpent,  broke  this  covenant  of 
works,  as  it  is  called,  by  eating  the  forbidden  fruit ; 
and  hereby  they,  and  their  posterity  in  them  and 
with  them,  became  not  only  liable  to  eternal  death, 
but  lost  also  their  natural  uprightness  and  all  ability 
to  please  God  ;  nay,  they  became  by  nature  enemies 
to  God  and  to  all  spiritual  good,  and  inclined  only  to 
evil  continually.  This,  says  Calvinism,  is  our  original 
sin ;  the  bitter  root  of  all  our  actual  transgressions, 
in  thought,  word,  and  deed. 

Yet,  though  man  has  neither  power  nor  inclination 
to  rise  out  of  this  wretched  fallen  state,  but  is  rather 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  11 

disposed  to  lie  insensible  in  it  till  he  perish,  another 
covenant  exists  by  which  his  condition  is  greatly 
affected.  This  is  the  covenant  of  redemption,  made  and 
agreed  upon,  says  Calvinism,  between  God  the  Father 
and  God  the  Son  in  the  Council  of  the  Trinity  before 
the  world  began.  The  sum  of  the  covenant  of  re- 
demption is  this  :  God  having,  by  the  eternal  decree 
already  mentioned,  freely  chosen  to  life  a  certain 
number  of  lost  mankind,  gave  them  before  the  world 
began  to  God  the  Son,  appointed  Eedeemer,  on  con- 
dition that  if  he  humbled  himself  so  far  as  to  assume 
the  human  nature  in  union  with  the  divine  nature, 
submit  himself  to  the  law  as  surety  for  the  elect,  and 
satisfy  justice  for  them  by  giving  obedience  in  their 
name,  even  to  suffering  the  cursed  death  of  the  cross, 
he  should  ransom  and  redeem  them  from  sin  and 
death,  and  purchase  for  them  righteousness  and 
eternal  life.  The  Son  of  God  accepted  the  condition, 
or  bargain  as  Calvinism  calls  it ;  and  in  the  fulness  of 
time  came,  as  Jesus  Christ,  into  the  world,  was  born 
of  the  Virgin  Mary,  subjected  himself  to  the  law, 
and  completely  paid  the  due  ransom  on  the  cross. 

God  has  in  his  word,  the  Bible,  revealed  to  man 
this  covenant  of  grace  or  redemption.  All  those 
whom  he  has  predestinated  to  life  he  in  his  own  time 
effectually  calls  to  be  partakers  in  the  release  offered. 
Man  is  altogether  passive  in  this  call,  until  the  Holy 
Spirit  enables  him  to  answer  it.  The  Holy  Spirit, 
the  third  person  in  the  Trinity,  applies  to  the  elect 
the  redemption  purchased  by  Christ,  through  working 
faith  in  them.      As  soon  as  the  elect  have  faith  in 


12  ST.  PAUL  AND  PKOTESTANTISM.  [i. 

Jesus  Christ,  that  is,  as  soon  as  they  give  their  con- 
sent heartily  and  repentantly,  in  the  sense  of  deserved 
condemnation,  to  the  covenant  of  grace,  God  justifies 
them  by  imputing  to  them  that  perfect  obedience 
which  Christ  gave  to  the  law,  and  the  satisfaction 
also  which  upon  the  cross  Christ  gave  to  justice  in 
their  name.  They  who  are  thus  called  and  justified 
are  by  the  same  power  likewise  sanctified ;  the 
dominion  of  carnal  lusts  being  destroyed  in  them, 
and  the  practice  of  holiness  being,  in  spite  of  some 
remnants  of  corruption,  put  in  their  power.  Good 
works,  done  in  obedience  to  God's  moral  law,  are  the 
fruits  and  evidences  of  a  true  faith ;  and  the  persons 
of  the  faithful  elect  being  accepted  through  Christ, 
their  good  works  also  are  accepted  in  him  and  re- 
warded. But  works  done  by  other  and  unregenerate 
men,  though  they  may  be  things  which  God  com- 
mands, cannot  please  God  and  are  sinful.  The  elect 
can  after  justification  and  sanctification  no  more  fall 
from  the  state  of  grace,  but  shall  certainly  persevere 
to  the  end  and  be  eternally  saved ;  and  of  this  they 
may,  even  in  the  present  life,  have  the  certain  assur- 
ance. Finally,  after  death,  their  souls  and  bodies  are 
joyfully  joined  together  again  in  the  resurrection,  and 
they  remain  thenceforth  for  ever  with  Christ  in  glory ; 
while  all  the  wicked  are  sent  away  into  hell  with 
Satan,  whom  they  have  served. 

We  have  here  set  down  the  main  doctrines  of  Cal- 
vinistic  Puritanism  almost  entirely  in  words  of  its 
own  choosing.  It  is  not  necessary  to  enter  into 
distinctions  such  as  those  between  sublapsarians  and 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  13 

supralapsarians,  between  Calvinists  who  believe  that 
God's  decree  of  election  and  reprobation  was  passed 
in  foresight  of  original  sin  and  on  account  of  it,  and 
Calvinists  who  believed  that  it  was  passed  absolutely 
and  independently.  The  important  points  of  Cal- 
vinism,— original  sin,  free  election,  effectual  calling, 
justification  through  imputed  righteousness, —  are 
common  to  both.  The  passiveness  of  man,  the  activity 
of  God,  are  the  great  features  in  this  scheme ;  there 
is  very  little  of  what  man  thinks  and  does,  very 
much  of  what  God  thinks  and  does ;  and  what  God 
thinks  and  does  is  described  with  such  particularity 
that  the  figure  we  have  used  of  the  man  in  the  next 
street  cannot  but  recur  strongly  to  our  minds. 

The  positive  Protestantism  of  Puritanism,  with 
which  we  are  here  concerned,  as  distinguished  from 
the  negative  Protestantism  of  the  Church  of  England, 
has  nourished  itself  with  ardour  on  this  scheme  of 
doctrine.  It  informs  and  fashions  the  whole  religion 
of  Scotland,  established  and  nonconforming.  It  is 
the  doctrine  which  Puritan  flocks  delight  to  hear 
from  their  ministers.  It  was  Puritanism's  constant 
reproach  against  the  Church  of  England,  that  this 
essential  doctrine  was  not  firmly  enough  held  and  set 
forth  by  her.  At  the  Hampton  Court  Conference  in 
1604,  in  the  Committee  of  Divines  appointed  by  the 
House  of  Lords  in  1641,  and  again  at  the  Savoy 
Conference  in  1661,  the  reproach  regularly  appeared. 
"Some  have  defended,"  is  the  Puritan  complaint, 
"  the  whole  gross  substance  of  Arminianism,  that  the 
act  of  conversion  depends  upon  the  concurrence  of 


14 


ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. 


[r. 


man's  free  will ;  some  do  teach  and  preach  that  good 
works  are  concauses  with  faith  in  the  act  of  justifica- 
tion ;  some  have  defended  universal  grace,  some  have 
absolutely  denied  original  sin."  As  Puritanism  grew, 
the  Calvinistic  scheme  of  doctrine  hardened  and 
became  stricter.  Of  the  Calvinistic  confessions  of 
faith  of  the  sixteenth  century, — the  Helvetic  Con- 
fession, the  Belgic  Confession,  the  Heidelberg  Cate- 
chism,— the  Calvinism  is  so  moderate  as  to  astonish 
any  one  who  has  been  used  only  to  its  later  develop- 
ments. Even  the  much  abused  canons  of  the  Synod 
of  Dort  no  one  can  read  attentively  through  without 
finding  in  parts  of  them  a  genuine  movement  of 
thought, — sometimes  even  a  philosophic  depth, — and 
a  powerful  religious  feeling.  In  the  documents  of 
the  Westminster  Assembly,  twenty-five  years  later, 
this  has  disappeared;  and  what  we  call  the  British 
Philistine  stands  in  his  religious  capacity,  sheer  and 
stark,  before  us.  Seriousness  is  the  one  merit  of 
these  documents,  but  it  is  a  seriousness  too  mixed 
with  the  alloy  of  mundane  strife  and  hatred  to  be 
called  a  religious  feeling.  Not  a  trace  of  delicacy  of 
perception,  or  of  philosophic  thinking ;  the  mere 
rigidness  and  contentiousness  of  the  controversialist 
and  political  dissenter ;  a  Calvinism  exaggerated  till 
it  is  simply  repelling ;  and  to  complete  the  whole,  a 
machinery  of  covenants,  conditions,  bargains,  and 
parties-contractors,  such  as  could  have  proceeded  from 
no  one  but  the  born  Anglo-Saxon  man  of  business, 
British  or  American. 

However,  a  scheme  of  doctrine  is  not  necessarily 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  15 

false  because  of  the  style  in  which  its  adherents  may 
have  at  a  particular  moment  enounced  it.  From  the 
faults  which  disfigure  the  performance  of  the  West- 
minster divines  the  profession  of  faith  prefixed  to  the 
Congregational  Year-Booh  is  free.  The  Congregation- 
alists  form  one  of  the  two  great  divisions  of  English 
Puritans.  "  Congregational  churches  believe,"  their 
Year-Booh  tells  us,  "  that  the  first  man  disobeyed  the 
divine  command,  fell  from  his  state  of  innocence  and 
purity,  and  involved  all  his  posterity  in  the  conse- 
quences of  that  fall.  They  believe  that  all  who  will 
be  saved  were  the  objects  of  God's  eternal  and 
electing  love,  and  were  given  by  an  act  of  divine 
sovereignty  to  the  Son  of  God.  They  believe  that 
Christ  meritoriously  obtained  eternal  redemption  for 
us,  and  that  the  Holy  Spirit  is  given  in  consequence 
of  Christ's  mediation."  The  essential  points  of  Cal- 
vinism are  all  here.  To  this  profession  of  faith, 
annually  published  in  the  Year-Booh  of  the  Inde- 
pendents, subscription  is  not  required;  Puritanism 
thus  remaining  honourably  consistent  with  the  pro- 
tests which,  at  the  Eestoration,  it  made  against  the 
call  for  subscription.  But  the  authors  of  the  Year- 
Booh  say  with  pride,  and  it  is  a  common  boast  of  the 
Independent  churches,  that  though  they  do  not 
require  subscription,  there  is,  perhaps,  in  no  religious 
body,  such  firm  and  general  agreement  in  doctrine  as 
among  Congregationalists.  This  is  true,  and  it  is 
even  more  true  of  the  flocks  than  of  the  ministers,  of 
whom  the  abler  and  the  younger  begin  to  be  lifted 
by  the  stream   of  modern  ideas.      Still,  up  to   the 


16  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

present  time,  the  Protestantism  of  one  great  division 
of  English  Puritans  is  undoubtedly  Calvinist ;  the 
Baptists  holding  in  general  the  scheme  of  Calvinism 
yet  more  strictly  than  the  Independents. 

The  other  great  division  of  English  Puritanism  is 
formed  by  the  Methodists.     Wesleyan  Methodism  is, 
as  is  well  known,  not  Calvinist,  but  Arminian.     The 
Methodist  Magazine  was  called  by  Wesley  the  Arminian 
Magazine,   and  kept  that  title   all  through  his  life. 
Arminianism  is  an  attempt  made  with  the  best  in- 
tentions, and  with  much  truth  of  practical  sense,  but 
not  in  a  very  profound  philosophical  spirit,  to  escape 
from  what  perplexes   and   shocks  us  in  Calvinism. 
The  God  of  Calvinism  is  a  magnified  and  non-natural 
man  who  decrees  at  his  mere  good  pleasure  some  men 
to  salvation  and  other  men  to  reprobation ;  the  God 
of  Arminianism  is  a  magnified  and  non-natural  man 
who  foreknows  the  course  of  each  man's  life,  and  who 
decrees   each   of   us   to   salvation  or  reprobation  in 
accordance  with  this  foreknowledge.     But  so  long  as 
we  remain  in  this  anthropomorphic  order  of  ideas  the 
question  will  always  occur  :  Why  did  not  a  being  of 
infinite  power  and  infinite  love  so  make  all  men  as 
that  there  should  be  no  cause  for  this  sad  foreknow- 
ledge and  sad  decree  respecting  a  number  of  them  1 
In  truth,  Calvinism  is  both  theologically  more  coherent, 
and  also  shows  a  deeper  sense  of  reality  than  Armin- 
ianism, which,  in  the  practical  man's  fashion,  is  apt 
to  scrape  the  surface  of  things  only. 

For  instance,  the  Arminian  Eemonstrants,  in  their 
zeal  to  justify  the  morality,  in  a  human  sense,  of 


L]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  17 

God's  ways,  maintained  that  he  sent  his  word  to  one 
nation  rather  than  another  according  as  he  saw  that 
one  nation  was  more  worthy  than  another  of  such  a 
preference.  The  Calvinist  doctors  of  the  Synod  of 
Dort  have  no  difficulty  in  showing  that  Moses  and 
Christ  both  of  them  assert,  with  respect  to  the  Jewish 
nation,  the  direct  contrary ;  and  not  only  do  they 
here  obtain  a  theological  triumph,  but  in  rebutting 
the  Arminian  theory  they  are  in  accordance  with 
historical  truth  and  with  the  real  march  of  human 
affairs.  They  allow  more  for  the  great  fact  of  the 
not  ourselves  in  what  we  do  and  are.  The  Calvinists 
seize,  we  say,  that  great  fact  better  than  the  Arminians. 
The.  Calvinist's  fault  is  mjn^^gcjentific  appreciation 
of  the  fact ;  in  the  reasons  he  gives  for  it.  God,  he 
says,  sends  his  word  to  one  nation  rather  than  another 
at  his  mere  good  pleasure.  Here  we  have  again  the 
magnified  and  non-natural  man,  who  likes  and  dislikes, 
knows  and  decrees,  just  as  a  man,  only  on  a  scale 
immensely  transcending  anything  of  which  we  have 
experience ;  and  whose  proceedings  we  nevertheless 
describe  as  if  he  were  in  the  next  street  for  people  to 
verify  all  we  say  about  him. 

Arminian  Methodism,  however,  puts  aside  the 
Calvinistic  doctrine  of  predestination.  The  foremost 
place,  which  in  the  Calvinist  scheme  belongs  to  the 
doctrine  of  predestination,  belongs  in  the  Methodist 
scheme  to  the  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith.  More 
and  more  prominently  does  modern  Methodism  ele- 
vate this  as  its  essential  doctrine ;  and  the  era  in 
their  founder's  life  which  Methodists  select  to  cele- 

VOL.  VII.  c 


18  ST.  PAUL  AND  PEOTESTANTISM.  [i. 

brate  is  the  era  of  his  conversion  to  it.  It  is  the 
doctrine  of  Anselm,  adopted  and  developed  by  Luther, 
set  forth  in  the  Confession  of  Augsburg,  and  current 
all  through  the  popular  theology  of  our  day.  We 
shall  find  it  in  almost  any  popular  hymn  we  happen 
to  take,  but  the  following  lines  of  Milton  exhibit  it 
classically.     By  the  fall  of  our  first  parents,  says  he  : — ■ 

' '  Man,  losing  all, 
To  expiate  his  treason  hath  nought  left, 
But  to  destruction  sacred  and  devote 
He  with  his  whole  posterity  must  die  ; 
Die  he  or  justice  must ;  unless  for  him 
Some  other  able,  and  as  willing,  pay 
The  rigid  satisfaction  ;  death  for  death. " 

By  Adam's  fall,  God's  justice  and  mercy  were  placed 
in  conflict.  God  could  not  follow  his  mercy  without 
violating  his  justice.  Christ  by  his  satisfaction  gave 
the  Father  the  right  and  power  (nudum  jus  Patri 
acquirebat,  said  the  Arminians)  to  follow  his  mercy, 
and  to  make  with  man  the  covenant  of  free  justifica- 
tion by  faith,  whereby,  if  a  man  has  a  sure  trust  and 
confidence  that  his  sins  are  forgiven  him  in  virtue  of 
the  satisfaction  made  to  God  for  them  by  the  death 
of  Christ,  he  is  held  clear  of  sin  by  God,  and  admitted 
to  salvation. 

This  doctrine,  like  the  Calvinist  doctrine  of  pre- 
destination, involves  a  whole  history  of  God's  proceed- 
ings, and  gives,  also,  first  and  almost  sole  place  to 
what  God  does,  with  disregard  to  what  man  does.  It 
has  thus  an  essential  affinity  with  Calvinism  ;  indeed, 
Calvinism  is  but  this  doctrine  of  original  sin  and 
justification,   plus    the    doctrine    of    predestination. 


L]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  19 

Nay,  the  Welsh  Methodists,  as  is  well  known,  have  no 
difficulty  in  combining  the  tenet  of  election  with  the 
practices  and  most  of  the  tenets  of  Methodism.  The 
word  solifidian  points  precisely  to  that  which  is  com- 
mon to  both  Calvinism  and  Methodism,  and  which 
has  made  both  these  halves  of  English  Puritanism  so 
popular, — their  sensational  side,  as  it  may  be  called, 
their  laying  all  stress  on  a  wonderful  and  particular 
account  of  what  God  gives  and  works  for  us,  not  on 
what  we  bring  or  do  for  ourselves.  "Plead  thou 
singly,"  says  "Wesley,  "  the  blood  of  the  covenant,  the 
ransom  paid  for  thy  proud  stubborn  soul."  Wesley's 
doctrines  of  conversion,  of  the  new  birth,  of  sanctifi- 
cation,  of  the  direct  witness  of  the  spirit,  of  assurance, 
of  sinless  perfection,  all  of  them  thus  correspond  with 
doctrines  which  we  have  noticed  in  Calvinism,  and 
show  a  common  character  with  them.  The  instan- 
taneousness  Wesley  loved  to  ascribe  to  conversion  and 
sanctification  points  the  same  way.  "  God  gives  in  a 
moment  such  a  faith  in  the  blood  of  his  Son  as  trans- 
lates us  out  of  darkness  into  light,  out  of  sin  and  fear 
into  holiness  and  happiness."  And  again,  "Look  for 
sanctification  just  as  you  are,  as  a  poor  sinner  that 
has  nothing  to  pay,  nothing  to  plead  but  Christ  died" 
This  is  the  side  in  Wesley's  teaching  which  his  fol- 
lowers have  above  all  seized,  and  which  they  are 
eager  to  hold  forth  as  the  essential  part  of  his  legacy 
towards  them. 

It  is  true  that  from  the  same  reason  which  pre- 
vents, as  we  have  said,  those  who  know  their  Bible 
and  nothing  else  from  really  knowing  even  their  Bible, 


20  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM. .  [i. 

Methodists,  who  for  the  most  part  know  nothing  but 
Wesley,  do  not  really  know  even  Wesley.  It  is  true 
that  what  really  characterises  this  most  interesting 
and  most  attractive  man,  is  not  his  doctrine  of  justi- 
fication by  faith,  or  any  other  of  his  set  doctrines, 
but  is  entirely  what  we  may  call  his  genius  for  godliness. 
Mr.  Alexander  Knox,  in  his  remarks  on  his  friend's 
life  and  character,  insists  much  on  an  entry  in  Wesley's 
Journal  in  1767,  where  he  seems  impatient  at  the 
endless  harping  on  the  tenet  of  justification,  and 
where  he  asks  "if  it  is  not  high  time  to  return  to 
the  plain  word  :  '  He  that  feareth  God  and  worketh 
righteousness  is  accepted  with  him.' "  Mr.  Knox  is 
right  in  thinking  that  the  feeling  which  made  Wesley 
ask  this  is  what  gave  him  his  vital  worth  and  character 
as  a  man  ;  but  it  is  not  what  gives  him  his  character 
as  the  teacher  of  Methodism.  Methodism  rejects 
Mr.  Knox's  version  of  its  founder,  and  insists  on 
making  the  article  of  justification  the  very  corner- 
stone of  the  Wesleyan  edifice. 

And  the  truth  undoubtedly  is,  that  not  by  his 
assertion  of  what  man  brings,  but  by  his  assertion 
of  what  God  gives,  by  his  doctrines  of  conversion, 
instantaneous  justification  and  sanctification,  assur- 
ance, and  sinless  perfection,  does  Wesley  live  and 
operate  in  Methodism.  "You  think,  I  must  first 
be  or  do  thus  or  thus  (for  sanctification).  Then 
you  are  seeking  it  by  works  unto  this  day.  If  you 
seek  it  by  faith,  you  may  expect  it  as  you  are ;  then 
expect  it  now.  It  is  of  importance  to  observe  that 
there   is   an   inseparable   connection   between   these 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PKOTESTANTISM.  21 

three  points  :  expect  it  by  faith,  expect  it  as  you  arc, 
and  expect  it  now.  To  deny  one  of  them  is  to  deny 
them  all  •  to  allow  one  is  to  allow  them  all."  This 
is  the  teaching  of  Wesley,  which  has  made  the  great 
Methodist  half  of  English  Puritanism  what  it  is,  and 
not  his  hesitations  and  recoils  at  the  dangers  of  his 
own  teaching. 

No  doubt,  as  the  seriousness  of  Calvinism,  its 
perpetual  conversance  with  deep  matters  and  with 
the  Bible,  have  given  force  and  fervency  to  Calvinist 
Puritans,  so  the  loveliness  of  Wesley's  piety,  and 
what  we  have  called  his  genius  for  godliness,  have 
sweetened  and  made  amiable  numberless  lives  of 
Methodist  Puritans.  But  as  a  religious  teacher, 
Wesley  is  to  be  judged  by  his  doctrine;  and  his 
doctrine,  like  the  Calvinistic  scheme,  rests  with  all 
its  weight  on  the  assertion  of  certain  minutely 
described  proceedings  on  GddV-part,  independent 
.e£-uy,  Ulli  expei lence,  and  UU1'  Will;  and  leads  its 
recipients  to  look,  in  religion,  not  so  much  for  an 
"arduous  progress  on  their  own  part,  and  the  exercise 
of  their  activity,  as  for  strokes  of  magic,  and  what 
may  be  called  a  sensational  character. 

In  the  Heidelberg  Catechism,  after  an  answer  in 
which  the  catechist  rehearses  the  popularly  received 
doctrine  of  original  sin  and  vicarious  satisfaction  for 
it,  the  catechiser  asks  the  pertinent  question  :  "  Uncle 
id  scis?" — how  do  you  know  all  that?  The  Apostle 
Paul  is,  as  we  have  already  shown,  the  great  authority 
for  it  whom  formal  theology  invokes;  his  name  is 
used  by  popular  theology  with  the  same  confidence. 


22  ST.  PAUL  AND  PEOTESTANTISM.  [i. 

I  open  a  modern  book  of  popular  religion  at  the 
account  of  a  visit  paid  to  a  hardened  criminal  seized 
with  terror  the  night  before  his  execution.  The 
visitor  says :  "I  now  stand  in  PauVs  place,  and  say  : 
In  Christ's  stead  we  pray  you,  be  ye  reconciled  to 
God.  I  beg  you  to  accept  the  pardon  of  all  your 
sins,  which  Christ  has  purchased  for  you,  and  which 
God  freely  bestows  on  you  for  his  sake.  If  you  do 
not  understand,  I  say :  God's  ways  are  not  as  our 
ways."  And  the  narrative  of  the  criminal's  conver- 
sion goes  on  :  "  That  night  was  spent  in  singing  the 
praises  of  the  Saviour  who  had  purchased  his  pardon." 
Both  Calvinism  and  Methodism  appeal,  therefore, 
to  the  Bible,  and,  above  all,  to  St.  Paul,  for  the 
history  they  propound  of  the  relations  between  God 
and  man ;  but  Calvinism  relies  most,  in  enforcing  it, 
on  man's  fears,  Methodism  on  man's  hopes.  Calvin- 
ism insists  on  man's  being  under  a  curse ;  it  then 
works  the  sense  of  sin,  misery,  and  terror  in  him, 
and  appeals  pre-eminently  to  the  desire  to  flee  from 
the  wrath  to  come.  Methodism,  too,  insists  on  his 
being  under  a  curse ;  but  it  works  most  the  sense  of 
hope  in  him,  the  craving  for  happiness,  and  appeals 
pre-eminently  to  the  desire  for  eternal  bliss.  No 
one,  however,  will  maintain  that  the  particular 
account  of  God's  proceedings  with  man,  whereby 
Methodism  and  Calvinism  operate  on  these  desires, 
proves  itself  by  internal  evidence,  and  establishes 
without  external  aid  its  own  scientific  validity.  So 
we  may  either  directly  try,  as  best  we  can,  its  scien- 
tific validity  in  itself;  or,  as  it  professes  to  have 


l]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  23 

Paul's  authority  to  support  it,  we  may  first  inquire 
what  is  really  Paul's  account  of  God's  proceedings 
with  man,  and  whether  this  tallies  with  the  Puritan 
account  and  confirms  it.  The  latter  is  in  every  way 
the  safer  and  the  more  instructive  course  to  follow. 
And  we  will  follow  Puritanism's  example  in  taking 
St.  Paul's  mature  and  greatest  work,  the  Epistle  to 
the  Eomans,  as  the  chief  place  for  finding  what  he 
really  thought  on  the  points  in  question. 

We  have  already  said  elsewhere,1  indeed,  what  is 
very  true,  and  what  must  never  be  forgotten,  that 
what  St.  Paul,  a  man  so  separated  from  us  by  time, 
race,  training  and  circumstances,  really  thought,  we 
cannot  make  sure  of  knowing  exactly.  All  we  can 
do  is  to  get  near  it,  reading  him  with  the  sort  of 
critical  tact  which  the  study  of  the  human  mind  and 
its  history,  and  the  acquaintance  with  many  great 
writers,  naturally  gives  for  following  the  movement 
of  any  one  single  great  writer's  thought;  reading 
him,  also,  without  preconceived  theories  to  which 
we  want  to  make  his  thoughts  fit  themselves.  It  is 
evident  that  the  English  translation  of  the  Epistle 
to  the  Eomans  has  been  made  by  men  with  their 
heads  full  of  the  current  doctrines  of  election  and 
justification  we  have  been  noticing ;  and  it  has 
thereby  received  such  a  bias, — of  which  a  strong 
example  is  the  use  of  the  word  atonement  in  the 
eleventh  verse  of  the  fifth  chapter, — that  perhaps  it 
is  almost  impossible  for  any  one  who  reads  the 
English   translation   only,    to    take    into   his    mind 

1  See  Culture  and  Anarchy,  chap.  v. 


24  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

Paul's  thought  without  a  colouring  from  the  current 
doctrines.  But  besides  discarding  the  English  trans- 
lation, we  must  bear  in  mind,  if  we  wish  to  get 
as  near  Paul's  real  thought  as  possible,  two  things 
which  have  greatly  increased  the  facilities  for  mis- 
representing him. 

In  the  first  place,  Paul,  like  the  other  Bible-writers, 
and  like  the  Semitic  race  in  general,  has  a  much  juster 
sense  of  the  true  scope  and  limits  of  diction  in  reli- 
gious deliverances  than  we  have.  He  uses  within  the 
sphere  of  religious  emotion  expressions  which,  in  this 
sphere,  have  an  eloquence  and  a  propriety,  but  which 
are  not  to  be  taken  out  of  it  and  made  into  formal 
scientific  propositions. 

This  is  a  point  very  necessary  to  be  borne  in  mind 
in  reading  the  Bible.  The  prophet  Nahum  says  in 
the  book  of  his  vision  :  "  God  is  jealous,  and  the  Lord 
revengeth;"1  and  the  authors  of  the  Westminster 
Confession,  drawing  out  a  scientific  theology,  lay 
down  the  proposition  that  God  is  a  jealous  and 
vengeful  God,  and  think  they  prove  their  proposi- 
tion by  quoting  in  a  note  the  words  of  Nahum. 
But  this  is  as  if  we  took  from  a  chorus  of  iEschylus 
one  of  his  grand  passages  about  guilt  and  destiny, 
just  put  the  words  straight  into  the  formal  and  exact 
cast  of  a  sentence  of  Aristotle,  and  said  that  here  was 
the  scientific  teaching  of  Greek  philosophy  on  these 
matters.  The  Hebrew  genius  has  not,  like  the  Greek, 
its  conscious  and  clear-marked  division  into  a  poetic 
side  and  a  scientific  side ;  the  scientific  side  is  almost 

1  Nahum  i.  2. 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  25 

absent.  The  Bible  utterances  have  often  the  char- 
acter of  a  chorus  of  iEschylus,  but  never  that  of  a 
treatise  of  Aristotle.  We,  like  the  Greeks,  possess 
in  our  speech  and  thought  the  two  characters ;  but 
so  far  as  the  Bible  is  concerned  we  have  generally 
confounded  them,  and  have  used  our  double  posses- 
sion for  our  bewilderment  rather  than  turned  it  to 
good  account.  The  admirable  maxim  of  the  great 
mediaeval  Jewish  school  of  Biblical  critics :  The  Law 
speaks  with  the  tongue  of  the  children  of  men, — a  maxim 
which  is  the  very  foundation  of  all  sane  Biblical 
criticism, — was  for  centuries  a  dead  letter  to  the 
whole  body  of  our  Western  exegesis,  and  is  a  dead 
letter  to  the  whole  body  of  our  popular  exegesis 
still.  Taking  the  Bible  language  as  equivalent  with 
the  language  of  the  scientific  intellect,  a  language 
which  is  adequate  and  absolute,  we  have  never  been 
in  a  position  to  use  the  key  which  this  maxim  of  the 
Jewish  doctors  offers  to  us.  But  it  is  certain  that, 
whatever  strain  the  religious  expressions  of  the 
Semitic  genius  were  meant,  in  the  minds  of  those 
who  gave  utterance  to  them,  to  bear,  the  particular 
strain  which  we  Western  people  put  upon  them  is 
one  which  they  were  not  meant  to  bear. 

We  have  used  the  word  Hebraise  1  for  another  pur- 
pose, to  denote  the  exclusive  attention  to  the  moral 
side  of  our  nature,  to  conscience,  and  to  doing  rather 
than  knowing ;  so,  to  describe  the  vivid  and  figured 
way  in  which  St.  Paul,  within  the  sphere  of  religious 
emotion,  uses  words,  without  carrying  them  outside 

1  See  Culture  and  Anarchy,  chap.  iv. 


26  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

it,  we  will  use  the  word  Orientalise.  When  Paul  says  : 
rod  hath  concluded  them  all  in  unbelief  that  he  might 
have  mercy  upon  all,"1  he  Orientalises;  that  is,  he 
does  not  mean  to  assert  formally  that  God  acted  with 
this  set  design,  but  being  full  of  the  happy  and  divine 
end  to  the  unbelief  spoken  of,  he,  by  a  vivid  and 
striking  figure,  represents  the  unbelief  as  actually 
caused  with  a  view  to  this  end.  But  when  the  Cal- 
vinists  of  the  Synod  of  Dort,  wishing  to  establish  the 
formal  proposition  that  faith  and  all  saving  gifts  flow 
from  election  and  nothing  else,  quote  an  expression 
of  Paul's  similar  to  the  one  we  have  quoted,  "He 
hath  chosen  us,"  they  say,  "  not  because  we  were,  but 
that  we  might  he  holy  and  without  blame  before  him," 
they  go  quite  wide  of  the  mark,  from  not  perceiving 
that  what  the  apostle  used  as  a  vivid  figure  of  rhetoric, 
they  are  using  as  a  formal  scientific  proposition. 

When  Paul  Orientalises,  the  fault  is  not  with  him 
when  he  is  misunderstood,  but  with  the  prosaic  and 
unintelligent  Western  readers  who  have  not  enough 
tact  for  style  to  comprehend  his  mode  of  expression. 
But  he  also  Judaises ;  and  here  his  liability  to  being 
misunderstood  by  us  Western  people  is  undoubtedly 
due  to  a  defect  in  the  critical  habit  of  himself  and  his 
race.  A  Jew  himself,  he  uses  the  Jewish  Scriptures 
in  a  Jew's  arbitrary  and  uncritical  fashion,  as  if  they 
had  a  talismanic  character ;  as  if  for  a  doctrine,  how- 
ever true  in  itself,  their  confirmation  was  still  neces- 
sary, and  as  if  this  confirmation  was  to  be  got  from 
their  mere  words  alone,  however  detached  from  the 

1  Rom.  xi.  32. 


I.j  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  27 

sense  of  their  context,  and  however  violently  allegor- 
ised or  otherwise  wrested. 

To  use  the  Bible  in  this  way,  even  for  purposes  of 
illustration,  is  often  an  interruption  to  the  argument, 
a  fault  of  style ;  to  use  it  in  this  way  for  real  proof 
and  confirmation,  is  a  fault  of  reasoning.  An  example 
of  the  first  fault  may  be  seen  in  the  tenth  chapter  of 
the  Epistle  to  the  Eomans,  and  in  the  beginning  of 
the  third  chapter.  The  apostle's  point  in  either  place, 
— his  point  that  faith  comes  by  hearing,  and  his  point 
that  God's  oracles  were  true  though  the  Jews  did  not 
believe  them, — would  stand  much  clearer  without 
their  scaffolding  of  Bible-quotation.  An  instance  of 
the  second  fault  is  in  the  third  and  fourth  chapters  of 
the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  where  the  Biblical  argu- 
mentation by  which  the  apostle  seeks  to  prove  his 
case  is  as  unsound  as  his  case  itself  is  sound.  How 
far  these  faults  are  due  to  the  apostle  himself,  how 
far  to  the  requirements  of  those  for  whom  he  wrote, 
we  need  not  now  investigate.  It  is  enough  that  he  un- 
doubtedly uses  the  letter  of  Scripture  in  this  arbitrary 
and  Jewish  way;  and  thus  Puritanism,  which  has  only 
itself  to  blame  for  misunderstanding  him  when  he  Orien- 
talises, may  fairly  put  upon  the  apostle  himself  some  of 
its  blame  for  misunderstanding  him  when  he  Judaises, 
and  for  Judaising  so  strenuously  along  with  him. 

To  get,  therefore,  at  what  Paid  really  thought  and 
meant  to  say,  it  is  necessary  for  us  modern  and  western 
people  to  translate  him.  And  not  as  Puritanism,  which 
has  merely  taken  his  letter  and  recast  it  in  the  formal 
propositions  of  a  modern  scientific  treatise ;  but  his 


28  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

letter  itself  must  be  recast  before  it  can  be  properly 
conveyed  by  such  propositions.  And  as  the  order  in 
which,  in  any  series  of  ideas,  the  ideas  come,  is  of 
great  importance  to  the  final  result,  and  as  Paul,  who 
did  not  write  scientific  treatises,  but  had  always  reli- 
gious edification  in  direct  view,  never  set  out  his  doc- 
trine with  a  design  of  exhibiting  it  as  a  scientific 
whole,  we  must  also  find  out  for  ourselves  the  order 
in  which  Paul's  ideas  naturally  stand,  and  the  con- 
nection between  one  of  them  and  the  other,  in  order 
to  arrive  at  the  real  scheme  of  his  teaching,  as  com- 
pared with  the  schemes  exhibited  by  Puritanism. 

We  remarked  how  what  sets  the  Calvinist  in 
motion  seems  to  be  the  desire  to  flee  from  the  wrath 
to  come ;  and  what  sets  the  Methodist  in  motion,  the 
desire  for  eternal  bliss.  What  is  it  sets  Paul  in 
motion  1  It  is  the  impulse  which  we  have  elsewhere 
noted  as  the  master-impulse  of  Hebraism, — the  desire 
for  righteousness.  "  I  exercise  myself,"  he  told  Felix, 
"  to  have  a  conscience  void  of  offence  toivards  God  and  men 
continually"  1  To  the  Hebrew,  this  moral  order,  or 
righteousness,  was  pre-eminently  the  universal  order, 
the  law  of  God;  and  God,  the  fountain  of  all  goodness, 
was  pre-eminently  to  him  the  giver  of  the  moral  law. 
The  end  and  aim  of  all  religion,  access  to  God, — the 
sense  of  harmony  with  the  universal  order — the  par- 
taking of  the  divine  nature — that  our  faith  and  hope 
might  be  in  God — that  we  might  have  life  and  have 
it  more  abundantly, — meant  for  the  Hebrew,  access 
to  the  source  of  the  moral  order  in  especial,  and  har- 

1  Acts  xxiv.  16. 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  29 

mony  with  it.  It  was  the  greatness  of  the  Hebrew 
race  that  it  felt  the  authority  of  this  order,  its  pre- 
ciousness  and  its  beneficence,  so  strongly.  "How 
precious  are  thy  thoughts  unto  me,  O  God  !  " — "The 
law  of  thy  mouth  is  better  than  thousands  of  gold  and 
silver." — "  My  soul  is  consumed  with  the  very  fervent 
desire  that  it  hath  alway  unto  thy  judgments."  *  It  was 
the  greatness  of  their  best  individuals  that  in  them  this 
feeling  was  incessantly  urgent  to  prove  itself  in  the  only 
sure  manner, — in  action.  "  Blessed  are  they  who  hear 
the  word  of  God,  and  keep  it."  "  If  thou  wouldst  enter 
into  life,  keep  the  commandments."  "Let  no  man 
deceive  you,  he  that  doeth  righteousness  is  righteous."2 
What  distinguishes  Paul  is  both  his  conviction  that 
the  commandment  is  holy,  and  just,  and  good;  and 

also  hJSjiesireto  givp.   effect)  tft  tlhff   frmimn.nrlrnfmt^tn 

establish  it.  It  was  this  which  gave  to  his  endeavour 
after  a  clear  conscience  such  meaning  and  efficacity. 
It  was  this  which  gave  him  insight  to  see  that  there 
could  be  no  radical  difference,  in  respect  of  salvation 
and  the  way  to  it,  between  Jew  and  Gentile.  "  Upon 
every  soul  of  man  that  worketh  evil,  whoever  he  may 
be,  tribulation  and  anguish ;  to  every  one  that  worketh 
good,  glory,  honour,  and  peace  !  "3 

St.  Paul's  piercing  practical  religious  sense,  joined 
to  his  strong  intellectual  power,  enabled  him  to  dis- 
cern and  follow  the  range  of  the  commandment,  both 
as  to  man's  actions  and  as  to  his  heart  and  thoughts, 
with  extraordinary  force  and  closeness.     His  religion 

1  Ps.  cxxxix.  7  ;  cxix.  72  ;  Ibid.  20. 
2  Luke  xi.  28  ;  Matt.  xix.  17  ;  1  John  iii.  7.        3  Rom.  ii.  9,  10. 


30  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

had,  as  we  shall  see,  a  preponderantly  mystic  side, 
and  nothing  is  so  natural  to  the  mystic  as  in  rich 
single  words,  such  as  faith,  light,  love,  to  sum  up  and 
take  for  granted,  without  specially  enumerating  them, 
all  good  moral  principles  and  habits ;  yet  nothing  is 
more  remarkable  in  Paul  than  the  frequent,  nay,  in- 
cessant lists,  in  the  most  particular  detail,  of  moral 
habits  to  be  pursued  or  avoided.  Lists  of  this  sort 
might  in  a  less  sincere  and  profound  writer  be  formal 
and  wearisome ;  but  to  no  attentive  reader  of  St. 
Paul  will  they  be  wearisome,  for  in  making  them  he 
touched  the  solid  ground  which  was  the  basis  of  his 
religion, — the  solid  ground  of  his  hearty  desire  for 
righteousness  and  of  his  thorough  conception  of  it, — 
and  only  on  such  a  ground  was  so  strong  a  super- 
structure possible.  The  more  one  studies  these  lists, 
the  more  does  their  significance  come  out.  To  illus- 
trate this,  let  any  one  go  through  for  himself  the 
enumeration,  too  long  to  be  quoted  here,  in  the  four 
last  verses  of  the  first  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans,  of  "things  which  are  not  convenient;"  or 
let  him  merely  consider  with  attention  this  catalogue 
towards  the  end  of  the  fifth  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Galatians,  of  fruits  of  the  spirit:  "love,  joy, 
peace,  long-suffering,  kindness,  goodness,  faith,  mild- 
ness, self-control."  -1  The  man  who  wrote  with  this 
searching  minuteness  knew  accurately  what  he  meant 
by  sin  and  righteousness,  and  did  not  use  these  words 
at  random.  His  diligent  comprehensiveness  in  his 
plan  of  duties  is  only  less  admirable  than  his  diligent 

1  Verses  22,  23. 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  31 

sincerity.  The  sterner  virtues  and  the  gentler,  his 
conscience  will  not  let  him  rest  till  he  has  embraced 
them  all.  In  his  deep  resolve  "to  make  out  by  actual 
trial  what  is  that  good  and  perfect  and  acceptable 
will  of  God," 1  he  goes  back  upon  himself  again  and 
again,  he  marks  a  duty  at  every  point  of  our  nature, 
and  at  points  the  most  opposite,  for  fear  he  should 
by  possibility  be  leaving  behind  him  some  weakness 
still  indulged,  some  subtle  promptings  to  evil  not  yet 
brought  into  captivity. 

It  has  not  been  enough  remarked  how  this  incom- 
parable honesty  and  depth  in  Paul's  love  of  righteous- 
ness is  probably  what  chiefly  explains  his  conversion. 
Most  men  have  the  defects,  as  the  saying  is,  of  their 
qualities.  Because  they  are  ardent  and  severe  they 
have  no  sense  fur  gentleness  and  sweetness  ;  because 
they  are  sweet  and  gentle  they  have  no  sense  for 
severity  and  ardour.  A  Puritan  is  a  Puritan,  and  a 
man  of  feeling  is  a  man  of  feeling.  But  with  Paul  the 
very  same  f  idness  of  moral  nature  which  made  him  an 
ardent  Pharisee,  "  as  concerning  zeal,  persecuting  the 
church,  touching  the  righteousness  which  is  in  the  law, 
blameless,  "was  so  large  that  it  carried  him  out  of  Phari- 
saism and  beyond  it,  when  once  he  found  how  much 
needed  doinc;  in  him  which  Pharisaism  could  not  do. 

Every  attentive  regarder  of  the  character  of  Paul, 
not  only  as  he  was  before  his  conversion  but  as  he 
appears  to  us  till  his  end,  must  have  been  struck  with 
two  things :  one,  the  earnest  insistence  with  which 
he  recommends  "bowels  of  mercies,"  as  he  calls  them: 

1  Rom.  xii.  2. 


32  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

meekness,  humbleness  of  mind,  gentleness,  unweary- 
ing forbearance,  crowned  all  of  them  with  that  emo- 
tion of  charity  "  which  is  the  bond  of  perfectness  ; " 
the  other,  the  force  with  which  he  dwells  on  the 
solidarity  (to  use  the  modern  phrase)  of  man, — the 
joint  interest,  that  is,  which  binds  humanity  together, 
the  duty  of  respecting  every  one's  part  in  life,  and  of 
doing  justice  to  his  efforts  to  fulfil  that  part.  Never 
surely  did  such  a  controversialist,  such  a  master  of 
sarcasm  and  invective,  commend,  with  such  manifest 
sincerity  and  such  persuasive  emotion,  the  qualities 
of  meekness  and  gentleness !  Never  surely  did  a 
worker,  who  took  with  such  energy  his  own  line,  and 
who  was  so  born  to  preponderate  and  predominate  in 
whatever  line  he  took,  insist  so  often  and  so  admir- 
ably that  the  lines  of  other  workers  were  just  as  good 
as  his  own  !  At  no  time,  perhaps,  did  Paul  arrive 
at  practising  quite  perfectly  what  he  thus  preached ; 
but  this  only  sets  in  a  stronger  light  the  thorough 
love  of  righteousness  which  made  him  seek  out,  and 
put  so  prominently  forward,  and  so  strive  to  make 
himself  and  others  fulfil,  parts  of  righteousness  which 
do  not  force  themselves  on  the  common  conscience 
like  the  duties  of  soberness,  temperance,  and  activity, 
and  which  were  somewhat  alien,  certainly,  to  his  own 
particular  nature.  Therefore  we  cannot  but  believe 
that  into  this  spirit,  so  possessed  with  the  hunger  and 
thirst  for  righteousness,  and  precisely  because  it  was 
so  possessed  by  it,  the  characteristic  doctrines  of 
Jesus,  which  brought  a  new  aliment  to  feed  this 
hunger  and  thirst, — of  Jesus  whom,  except  in  vision, 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  33 

he  had  never  seen,  but  who  was  in  every  one's  words 
and  thoughts,  the  teacher  who  was  meek  and  lowly 
in  heart,  who  said  men  were  brothers  and  must  love 
one  another,  that  the  last  should  often  be  first,  that 
the  exercise  of  dominion  and  lordship  had  nothing  in 
them  desirable,  and  that  we  must  become  as  little 
children, — sank  down  and  worked  there  even  before 
Paul  ceased  to  persecute,  and  had  no  small  part  in 
getting  him  ready  for  the  crisis  of  his  conversion. 

Such  doctrines  offered  new  fields  of  righteousness 
to  the  eyes  of  this  indefatigable  explorer  of  it,  and 
enlarged  the  domain  of  duty  of  which  Pharisaism 
showed  him  only  a  portion.  Then,  after  the  satisfac- 
tion thus  given  to  his  desire  for  a  full  conception  of 
righteousness,  came  Christ's  injunctions  to  make  clean 
the  inside  as  well  as  the  outside,  to  beware  of  the 
least  leaven  of  hypocrisy  and  self-flattery,  of  saying 
and  not  doing ; — and,  finally,  the  injunction  to  feel, 
after  doing  all  we  can,  that,  as  compared  with  the 
standard  of  perfection,  we  are  still  unprofitable 
servants.  These  teachings  were,  to  a  man  like  Paul, 
for  the  practice  of  righteousness  what  the  others  were 
for  the  theory  ; — sympathetic  utterances,  which  made 
the  inmost  chords  of  his  being  vibrate,  and  which 
irresistibly  drew  him  sooner  or  later  towards  their 
utterer.  Need  it  be  said  that  he  never  forgot  them, 
and  that  in  all  his  pages  they  have  left  their  trace  1 
It  is  even  affecting  to  see,  how,  when  he  is  driven  for 
the  very  sake  of  righteousness  to  put  the  law  of 
righteousness  in  the  second  place,  and  to  seek  outside 
the  law  itself  for  a  power  to  fulfil  the  law,  how,  I 

VOL.  VII.  d 


34  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [l. 

say,  he  returns  again  and  again  to  the  elucidation  of 
his  one  sole  design  in  all  he  is  doing;  how  he  labours 
to  prevent  all  possibility  of  misunderstanding,  and  to 
show  that  he  is  only  leaving  the  moral  law  for  a 
moment  in  order  to  establish  it  for  ever  more  victori- 
ously. What  earnestness  and  pathos  in  the  assur- 
ance :  "If  there  had  been  a  law  given  which  could 
have  given  life,  verily,  righteousness  should  have  been 
by  the  law  ! "  1  "  Do  I  condemn  the  law  1 "  he  keeps 
saying  ;  "  do  I  forget  that  the  commandment  is  holy, 
just,  and  good  1  Because  we  are  no  longer  under  the 
law,  are  we  to  sin  ?  Am  I  seeking  to  make  the  course 
of  my  life  and  yours  other  than  a  service  and  an 
obedience  ? "  This  man,  out  of  whom  an  astounding 
criticism  has  deduced  Antinomianism,  is  in  truth  so 
possessed  with  horror  of  Antinomianism,  that  he  goes 
to  grace  for  the  sole  purpose  of  extirpating  it,  and 
even  then  cannot  rest  without  perpetually  telling  us 
why  he  is  gone  there.  This  man,  whom  Calvin  and 
Luther  and  their  followers  have  shut  up  into  the  two 
scholastic  doctrines  of  election  and  justification,  would 
have  said,  could  we  hear  him,  just  what  he  said  about 
circumcision  and  uncircumcision  in  his  own  day : 
"  Election  is  nothing,  and  justification  is  nothing,  but 
the  keeping  of  the  commandments  of  God." 

This  foremost  place  which  righteousness  takes  in 
the  order  of  St.  Paul's  ideas  makes  a  signal  difference 
between  him  and  Puritanism.  Puritanism,  as  we 
have  said,  finds  its  starting-point  either  in  the  desire 
to  flee  from  eternal  wrath  or  in  the  desire  to  obtain 

1  Gal.  iii.  21. 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  35 

eternal  bliss.  Puritanism  has  learned  from  revela- 
tion, as  it  says,  a  particular  history  of  the  first  man's 
fall,  of  mankind  being  under  a  curse,  of  certain  con- 
tracts having  been  passed  concerning  mankind  in  the 
Council  of  the  Trinity,  of  the  substance  of  those  con- 
tracts, and  of  man's  position  under  them.  The  great 
concern  of  Puritanism  is  with  the  operation  of  those 
contracts  on  man's  condition ;  its  leading  thought,  if 
it  is  a  Puritanism  of  a  gloomy  turn,  is  of  awe  and 
fear  caused  by  the  threatening  aspect  of  man's  condi- 
tion under  these  contracts ;  if  of  a  cheerful  turn,  of 
gratitude  and  hope  caused  by  the  favourable  aspect 
of  it.  But  in  either  case,  foregone  events,  the  cove- 
nant passed,  what  God  has  done  and  does,  is  the  great 
matter.  What  there  is  left  for  man  to  do,  the  human 
work  of  righteousness,  is  secondary,  and  comes  in  but 
to  attest  and  confirm  our  assurance  of  what  God  has 
done  for  us.  We  have  seen  this  in  Wesley's  words 
already  quoted :  the  first  thing  for  a  man  is  to  be 
justified  and  sanctified,  and  to  have  the  assurance 
that,  without  seeking  it  by  works,  he  is  justified  and 
sanctified ;  then  the  desire  and  works  of  righteousness 
follow  as  a  proper  result  of  this  condition.  Still 
more  does  Calvinism  make  man's  desire  and  works  of 
righteousness  mere  evidences  and  benefits  of  more 
important  things;  the  desire  to  work  righteousness 
is  among  the  saving  graces  applied  by  the  Holy  Spirit 
to  the  elect,  and  the  last  of  those  graces.  Denique, 
says  the  Synod  of  Dort,  last  of  all,  after  faith  in  the 
promises  and  after  the  witness  of  the  Spirit,  comes, 
to  establish  our  assurance,   a  clear  conscience   and 


36  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

righteousness.  It  is  manifest  how  unlike  is  this 
order  of  ideas  to  Paul's  order,  who  starts  with  the 
thought  of  a  conscience  void  of  offence  towards  God 
and  man,  and  builds  upon  that  thought  his  whole 
system. 

But  this  difference  constitutes  from  the  very  outset 
an  immense  scientific  superiority  for  the  scheme  of 
Paul.  Hope  and  fear  are  elements  of  human  nature 
like  the  love  of  right,  but  they  are  far  blinder  and 
less  scientific  elements  of  it.  "  The  Bible  is  a  divine 
revelation ;  the  Bible  declares  certain  things ;  the 
things  it  thus  declares  have  the  witness  of  our  hopes 
and  fears  ; " — this  is  the  line  of  thought  followed  by 
Puritanism.  But  what  science  seeks  after  is  a  satisfy- 
ing rational  conception  of  things.  A  scheme  which 
fails  to  give  this,  which  gives  the  contrary  of  this, 
may  indeed  be  of  a  nature  to  move  our  hopes  and 
fears,  but  is  to  science  of  none  the  more  value  on  that 
account. 

Nor  does  our  calling  such  a  scheme  a  revelation 
mend  the  matter.  Instead  of  covering  the  scientific 
inadequacy  of  a  conception  by  the  authority  of  a 
revelation,  science  rather  proves  the  authority  of  a 
revelation  by  the  scientific  adequacy  of  the  concep- 
tions given  in  it,  and  limits  the  sphere  of  that  authority 
to  the  sphere  of  that  adequacy.  The  more  an  alleged 
revelation  seems  to  contain  precious  and  striking 
things,  the  more  will  science  be  inclined  to  doubt  the 
correctness  of  any  deduction  which  draws  from  it, 
within  the  sphere  of  these  things,  a  scheme  which 
rationally  is  not  satisfying.      That  the   scheme   of 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  37 

Puritanism  is  rationally  so  little  satisfying  inclines 
science,  not  to  take  it  on  the  authority  of  the  Bible, 
but  to  doubt  whether  it  is  really  in  the  Bible.  The 
first  appeal  which  this  scheme,  having  begun  outside 
the  sphere  of  reality  and  experience,  makes  in  the 
sphere  of  reality  and  experience, — its  first  appeal, 
therefore,  to  science, — the  appeal  to  the  witness  of 
human  hope  and  fear,  does  not  much  mend  matters ; 
for  science  knows  that  numberless  conceptions  not 
rationally  satisfying  are  yet  the  ground  of  hope  and 
fear. 

Paul  does  not  begin  outside  the  sphere  of  science ; 
he  begins  with  an  appeal  to  reality  and  experience. 
And  the  appeal  here  with  which  he  commences  has, 
for  science,  undoubted  force  and  importance ;  for  he 
appeals  to  a  rational  conception  which  is  a  part,  and 
perhaps  the  chief  part,  of  our  experience;  the  con- 
ception of  the  law  of  righteousness,  the  very  law  and 
ground  of  human  nature  so  far  as  this  nature  is 
moral.  Things  as  they  truly  are, — facts, — are  the 
object  -  matter  of  science ;  and  the  moral  law  in 
human  nature,  however  this  law  may  have  origin- 
ated, is  in  our  actual  experience  among  the  greatest 
of  facts. 

If  I  were  not  afraid  of  intruding  upon  Mr.  Buskin's 
province,  I  might  point  out  the  witness  which  ety- 
mology itself  bears  to  this  law  as  a  prime  element 
and  clue  in  man's  constitution.  Our  word  righteous- 
ness means  going  straight,  going  the  way  we  are 
meant  to  go ;  there  are  languages  in  which  the  word 
"  way  "  or  "  road  "  is  also  the  word  for  right  reason 


38  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

and  duty ;  the  Greek  word  for  justice  and  righteous- 
ness has  for  its  foundation,  some  say,  the  idea  of 
describing  a  certain  line,  following  a  certain  necessary 
orbit.  But  for  these  fanciful  helps  there  is  no  need. 
When  Paul  starts  with  affirming  the  grandeur  and 
necessity  of  the  law  of  righteousness,  science  has  no 
difficulty  in  going  along  with  him.  When  he  fixes 
as  man's  right  aim  "love,  joy,  peace,  long-suffering, 
kindness,  goodness,  faith,  mildness,  self-control,"1  he 
appeals  for  witness  to  the  truth  of  what  he  says  to 
an  experience  too  intimate  to  need  illustration  or 
argument. 

The  best  confirmation  of  the  scientific  validity  of 
the  importance  which  Paul  thus  attaches  to  the  law 
of  righteousness,  the  law  of  reason  and  conscience, 
God  as  moral  law,  is  to  be  found  in  its  agreement 
with  the  importance  attached  to  this  law  by  teachers 
the  most  unlike  him ;  since  in  the  eye  of  science  an 
experience  gains  as  much  by  having  universality,  as 
in  the  eye  of  religion  it  seems  to  gain  by  having 
uniqueness.  "  Would  you  know,"  says  Epictetus, 
"the  means  to  perfection  which  Socrates  followed1? 
they  were  these :  in  every  single  matter  which  came 
before  him  he  made  the  rule  of  reason  and  conscience 
his  one  rule  to  follow."  Such  was  precisely  the  aim 
of  Paul  also ;  it  is  an  aim  to  which  science  does 
homage  as  a  satisfying  rational  conception.  And  to 
this  aim  hope  and  fear  properly  attach  themselves. 
For  on  our  following  the  clue  of  moral  order,  or 
losing  it,  depends  our  happiness  or  misery ;  our  life 

1  Gal.  v.  22,  23. 


i.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  39 

or  death  in  the  true  sense  of  those  words ;  our  har- 
mony with  the  universal  order  or  our  disharmony 
with  it ;  our  partaking,  as  St.  Paul  says,  of  the  wrath 
of  God  or  of  the  glory  of  God.  So  that  looking  to 
this  clue,  and  fearing  to  lose  hold  on  it,  we  may  in 
strict  scientific  truth  say  with  the  author  of  the 
Imitation :  Omnia  vanitas,  propter  amare  Deum,  et  Mi 
soli  servire. 

But  to  serve  God,  to  follow  that  central  clue  in 
our  moral  being  which  unites  us  to  the  universal 
order,  is  no  easy  task;  and  here  again  we  are  on 
the  most  sure  ground  of  experience  and  psychology-i 
In  some  way  or  other,  says  Bishop  Wilson,  every  man 
is  conscious  of  an  opposition  in  him  between  the  flesh 
and  the  spirit.  Video  meliora  proboque  deteriora  sequor, 
say  the  thousand  times  quoted  lines  of  the  Roman 
poet.  The  philosophical  explanation  of  this  conflict 
does  not  indeed  attribute,  like  the  Manichaean  fancy, 
any  inherent  evil  to  the  flesh  and  its  workings ;  all 
the  forces  and  tendencies  in  us  are,  like  our  proper 
central  moral  tendency  the  desire  of  righteousness, 
in  themselves  beneficent.  But  they  require  to  be 
harmonised  with  this  tendency,  because  this  aims 
directly  at  our  total  moral  welfare, — our  harmony  as 
moral  beings  with  the  law  of  our  nature  and  the  law 
of  God, — and  derives  thence  a  pre-eminence  and  a 
right  to  moderate.  And,  though  they  are  not  evil  in 
themselves,  the  evil  which  flows  from  these  diverse 
workings  is  undeniable.  The  lusts  of  the  flesh,  the 
law  in  our  members,  passion,  according  to  the  Greek 
word  used  by  Paul,  inordinate  affection,  according  to 


40  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM,  [i. 

the  admirable  rendering  of  Paul's  Greek  word  in  our 
English  Bible,1  take  naturally  no  account  of  anything 
but  themselves ;  this  arbitrary  and  unregulated  action 
of  theirs  can  produce  only  confusion  and  misery.  The 
spirit,  the  law  of  our  mind,  takes  account  of  the 
universal  moral  order,  the  will  of  God,  and  is  indeed 
the  voice  of  that  order  expressing  itself  in  us.  Paul 
talks  of  a  man  sowing  to  his  flesh,2  because  each  of 
us  has  of  his  own  this  individual  body,  this  congeries  of 
flesh  and  bones,  blood  and  nerves,  different  from  that 
of  every  one  else,  and  with  desires  and  impulses 
driving  each  of  us  his  own  separate  way ;  and  he  says 
that  a  man  who  sows  to  this,  sows  to  a  thousand 
tyrants,  and  can  reap  no  worthy  harvest.  But  he 
talks  of  sowing  to  the  spirit ;  because  there  is  one 
central  moral  tendency  which  for  us  and  for  all  men 
is  the  law  of  our  being,  and  through  reason  and 
righteousness  we  move  in  this  universal  order  and 
with  it.  In  this  conformity  to  the  will  of  God,  as  we 
religiously  name  the  moral  order,  is  our  peace  and 
happiness. 

But  how  to  find  the  energy  and  power  to  bring  all 
those  self-seeking  tendencies  of  the  flesh,  those  multi- 
tudinous, swarming,  eager,  and  incessant  impulses, 
into  obedience  to  the  central  tendency  1  Mere  com- 
manding and  forbidding  is  of  no  avail,  and  only 
irritates  opposition  in  the  desires  it  tries  to  control. 
It  even  enlarges  their  power,  because  it  makes  us  feel 
our  impotence ;  and  the  confusion  caused  by  their 
ungoverned  working  is  increased  by  our  being  filled 
1  Col.  iii.  5.  2  Gal.  vi.  8. 


I.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  41 

with  a  deepened  sense  of  disharmony,  remorse,  and 
dismay.  "  I  was  alive  without  the  law  once,"  1  says 
Paul ;  the  natural  play  of  all  the  forces  and  desires  in 
me  went  on  smoothly  enough  so  long  as  I  did  not 
attempt  to  introduce  order  and  regulation  among 
them.  But  the  condition  of  immoral  tranquillity 
could  not  in  man  be  permanent.  That  natural  law  of 
reason  and  conscience  which  all  men  have,  was  suffi- 
cient by  itself  to  produce  a  consciousness  of  rebellion 
and  disquietude.  Matters  became  only  worse  by  the 
exhibition  of  the  Mosaic  law,  the  offspring  of  a  moral 
sense  more  poignant  and  stricter,  however  little  it 
might  show  of  subtle  insight  and  delicacy,  than  the 
moral  sense  of  the  mass  of  mankind.  The  very 
stringency  of  the  Mosaic  code  increased  the  feeling 
of  dismay  and  helplessness ;  it  set  forth  the  law  of 
righteousness  more  authoritatively  and  minutely,  yet 
did  not  supply  any  sufficient  power  to  keep  it. 
Neither  the  law  of  nature,  therefore,  nor  the  law  of 
Moses,  availed  to  blind  men  to  righteousness.  So 
we  come  to  the  word  which  is  the  governing  word  of 
the  Epistle  to  the  Eomans, — the  word  all.  As  the 
word  righteousness  is  the  governing  word  of  St.  Paul's 
entire  mind  and  life,  so  the  word  all  is  the  governing 
word  of  this  his  chief  epistle.  The  Gentile  with  the 
law  of  nature,  the  Jew  with  the  law  of  Moses,  alike 
fail  to  achieve  righteousness.  "All  have  sinned,  and 
come  short  of  the  glory  of  God."  2  All  do  what  they 
would  not,  and  do  not  what  they  would;  all  feel 
themselves  enslaved,  impotent,  guilty,  miserable. 
1  Rom.  vii.  9  2  Rom.  iii.  23. 


42  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [i. 

ki  0  wretched  man  that  I  am,  who  shall  deliver  me 
from  the  body  of  this  death  1 " * 

Hitherto,  we  have  followed  Paul  in  the  sphere  of 
morals;  we  have  now  come  with  him  to  the  point 
where  he  enters  the  sphere  of  religion.  Eeligion  is 
that  which  binds  and  holds  us  to  the  practice  of 
righteousness.  We  have  accompanied  Paul,  and 
found  him  always  treading  solid  ground,  till  he  is 
brought  to  straits  where  a  binding  and  holding  power 
of  this  kind  is  necessary.  Here  is  the  critical  point 
for  the  scientific  worth  of  his  doctrine.  "  Now  at 
last,"  cries  Puritanism,  "  the  great  apostle  is  about  to 
become  even  as  one  of  us ;  there  is  no  issue  for  him 
now,  but  the  issue  we  have  always  declared  he  finds. 
He  has  recourse  to  our  theurgy  of  election,  justifica- 
tion, substitution,  and  imputed  righteousness."  We 
will  proceed  to  show  that  Paul  has  recourse  to  nothing 
of  the  kind. 

1  Rom.  vii.  24. 


il]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  43 


II. 


We  have  seen  how  Puritanism  seems  to  come  by  its 
religion  in  the  first  instance  theologically  and  from 
authority ;  Paul  by  his,  on  the  other  hand,  psycho- 
logically and  from  experience.  Even  the  points, 
therefore,  in  which  they  both  meet,  they  have  not 
reached  in  the  same  order  or  by  the  same  road.  The 
miserable  sense  of  sin  from  unrighteousness,  the  joyful 
witness  of  a  good  conscience  from  righteousness,  these 
are  points  in  which  Puritanism  and  St.  Paul  meet. 
They  are  facts  of  human  nature  and  can  be  verified 
by  science.  But  whereas  Puritanism,  so  far  as  science 
is  concerned,  ends  with  these  facts,  and  rests  the 
whole  weight  of  its  antecedent  theurgy  upon  the 
witness  to  it  they  offer,  Paul  begins  with  these  facts, 
and  has  not  yet,  so  far  as  we  have  followed  him, 
called  upon  them  to  prove  anything  but  themselves. 
The  scientific  difference,  as  we  have  already  remarked, 
which  this  establishes  between  Paul  and  Puritanism 
is  immense,  and  is  all  in  Paul's  favour.  Sin  and 
righteousness,  together  with  their  eternal  accompani- 
ments of  fear  and  hope,  misery  and  happiness,  can 
prove  themselves ;  but  they  can  by  no  means  prove, 
also,  Puritanism's  history  of  original  sin,  election  and 
justification. 

Puritanism  is  fond  of  maintaining,   indeed,  that 
Paul's  doctrines  derive  their  sanction,  not  from  any 


44  ST.  PAUL  AND  PEOTESTANTISM.  [n. 

agreement  with  science  and  experience,  but  from  his 
miraculous  conversion,  and  that  this  conversion  it 
was  which  in  his  own  judgment  gave  to  them  their 
authority.  But  whatever  sanction  the  miracle  of  his 
conversion  may  in  his  own  eyes  have  lent  to  the 
doctrines  afterwards  propounded  by  Paul,  it  is  clear 
that,  for  science,  his  conversion  adds  to  his  doctrines 
no  force  at  all  which  they  do  not  already  possess  in 
themselves.  Paul's  conversion  is  for  science  an  event 
of  precisely  the  same  nature  as  the  conversions  of 
which  the  history  of  Methodism  relates  so  many ; 
events  described,  for  the  most  part,  just  as  the  event 
of  Paul's  conversion  is  described,  with  perfect  good 
faith,  and  which  we  may  perfectly  admit  to  have 
happened  just  in  the  manner  related,  without  on  that 
account  attributing  to  those  who  underwent  them  any 
source  of  certitude  for  a  scheme  of  doctrine  which 
this  doctrine  does  not  on  other  and  better  grounds 
possess. 

Surely  this  proposition  has  only  to  be  clearly 
stated  in  order  to  be  self-evident.  The  conversion 
of  Paul  is  in  itself  an  incident  of  precisely  the  same 
order  as  the  conversion  of  Sampson  Staniforth,  a 
Methodist  soldier  in  the  campaign  of  Fontenoy. 
Staniforth  himself  relates  his  conversion  as  follows, 
in  words  which  bear  plainly  marked  on  them  the  very 
stamp  of  good  faith  : — 

"  From  twelve  at  night  till  two  it  was  my  turn  to 
stand  sentinel  at  a  dangerous  post.  1  had  a  fellow- 
sentinel,  but  I  desired  him  to  go  away,  which  he 
willingly  did.     As  soon  as  I  was  alone,  I  knelt  down 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  45 

and  determined  not  to  rise,  but  to  continue  crying 
and  wrestling  with  God  till  he  had  mercy  on  me. 
How  long  I  was  in  that  agony  I  cannot  tell ;  but  as 
I  looked  up  to  heaven  I  saw  the  clouds  open  exceed- 
ing bright,  and  I  saw  Jesus  hanging  on  the  cross. 
At  the  same  moment  these  words  were  applied  to  my 
heart :  '  Thy  sins  are  forgiven  thee.'  All  guilt  was 
gone,  and  my  soul  was  filled  with  unutterable  peace  : 
the  fear  of  death  and  hell  was  vanished  away.  I  was 
filled  with  wonder  and  astonishment.  I  closed  my 
eyes,  but  the  impression  was  still  the  same ;  and  for 
about  ten  weeks,  while  I  was  awake,  let  me  be  where 
I  would,  the  same  appearance  was  still  before  my 
eyes,  and  the  same  impression  upon  my  heart,  Thy 
sins  are  forgiven  thee." 

Not  the  narrative,  in  the  Acts,  of  Paul's  journey 
to  Damascus,  could  more  convince  us,  as  we  have 
said,  of  its  own  honesty.  But  this  honesty  makes 
nothing,  as  every  one  will  admit,  for  the  scientific 
truth  of  any  scheme  of  doctrine  propounded  by 
Sampson  Staniforth,  which  must  prove  itself  and  its 
own  scientific  value  before  science  can  admit  it.  Pre- 
cisely the  same  is  it  with  Paul's  doctrine ;  and  we 
repeat,  therefore,  that  he  and  his  doctrine  have  herein 
a  great  advantage  over  Puritanism,  in  that,  so  far  as 
we  have  yet  followed  them,  they,  unlike  Puritanism, 
rely  on  facts  of  experience  and  assert  nothing  which 
science  cannot  verify. 

We  have  now  to  see  whether  Paul,  in  passing  from 
the  undoubted  facts  of  experience,  with  which  he 
begins,  to  his  religion  properly  so  called,  abandons  in 


46  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

any  essential  points  of  his  teaching  the  advantage 
with  which  he  started,  and  ends,  as  Puritanism  com- 
mences, with  a  batch  of  arbitrary  and  unscientific 
assumptions. 

We  left  Paul  in  collision  with  a  fact  of  human 
nature,  but  in  itself  a  sterile  fact,  a  fact  on  which  it 
is  possible  to  dwell  too  long,  although  Puritanism, 
thinking  this  impossible,  has  remained  intensely 
absorbed  in  the  contemplation  of  it,  and  indeed  has 
never  properly  got  beyond  it, — the  sense  of  sin.  Sin 
is  not  a  monster  to  be  mused  on,  but  an  impotence  to 
be  got  rid  of.  All  thinking  about  it,  beyond  what  is 
indispensable  for  the  firm  effort  to  get  rid  of  it,  is 
waste  of  energy  and  waste  of  time.  We  then  enter 
that  element  of  morbid  and  subjective  brooding,  in 
which  so  many  have  perished.  This  sense  of  sin, 
however,  it  is  also  possible  to  have  not  strongly 
enough  to  beget  the  firm  effort  to  get  rid  of  it,  and 
the  Greeks,  with  all  their  great  gifts,  had  this  sense 
not  strongly  enough ;  its  strength  in  the  Hebrew 
people  is  one  of  this  people's  mainsprings.  And  no 
Hebrew  prophet  or  psalmist  felt  what  sin  was  more 
powerfully  than  Paul.  "  Mine  iniquities  have  taken 
hold  upon  me  so  that  I  am  not  able  to  look  up ;  they 
are  more  than  the  hairs  of  mine  head ;  therefore  my 
heart  faileth  me."  1  They  are  more  than  the  hairs  of 
mine  head.  The  motions  of  what  Paul  calls  "  the  law 
in  our  members  "  are  indeed  a  hydrabrood  ;  when  we 
are  working  against  one  fault,  a  dozen  others  crop  up 
without  our  expecting  it ;  and  this  it  is  which  drives 

1  Psalm  xl.  12. 


n.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  47 

the  man  who  deals  seriously  with  himself  to  difficulty, 
nay  to  despair.  Paul  did  not  need  James  to  tell  him 
that  whoever  offends  on  one  point  is,  so  far  at  least 
as  his  own  conscience  and  inward  satisfaction  are 
concerned,  guilty  of  all ; 1  he  knew  it  himself,  and  the 
unrest  this  knowledge  gave  him  was  his  very  starting- 
point.  He  knew,  too,  that  nothing  outward,  no 
satisfaction  of  all  the  requirements  men  may  make  of 
us,  no  privileges  of  any  sort,  can  give  peace  of  con- 
science ; — of  conscience,  "  whose  praise  is  not  of  men 
but  of  God." 2  He  knew,  also,  that  the  law  of  the 
moral  order  stretches  beyond  us  and  our  private  con- 
science, is  independent  of  our  sense  of  having  kept 
it,  and  stands  absolute  and  what  in  itself  it  is ;  even, 
therefore,  though  I  may  know  nothing  against  myself, 
yet  this  is  not  enough,  I  may  still  not  be  just.3 
Finally,  Paul  knew  that  merely  to  know  all  this  and 
say  it,  is  of  no  use,  advances  us  nothing  ;  "  the  king- 
dom of  God  is  not  in  word  but  in  power."  4 

"We  have  several  times  said  that  the  Hebrew  race 
apprehended  God, — the  universal  order  by  which  all 
things  fulfil  the  law  of  their  being, — chiefly  as  the 
moral  order  in  human  nature,  and  that  it  was  their 
greatness  that  they  apprehended  him  as  this  so  dis- 
tinctly and  powerfully.  But  it  is  also  characteristic 
of  them,  and  perhaps  it  is  what  mainly  distinguishes 
their  spirit  from  the  spirit  of  mediaeval  Christianity, 
that  they  constantly  thought,  too,  of  God  as  the 
source  of  life  and  breath  and  all  things,  and  of  what 

1  James  ii.  10.  2  Rom.  ii.  29. 

3  1  Cor.  iv.  4.  4  Ibid.  20. 


48  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTEST  AN  TISM.  [n. 

they  called  "  fulness  of  life  "  in  all  things.  This  way 
of  thinking  was  common  to  them  with  the  Greeks ; 
although,  whereas  the  Greeks  threw  more  delicacy 
and  imagination  into  it,  the  Hebrews  threw  more 
energy  and  vital  warmth.  But  to  the  Hebrew,  as  to 
the  Greek,  the  gift  of  life,  and  health,  and  the  world, 
was  divine,  as  well  as  the  gift  of  morals.  "  God's 
righteousness,"  indeed,  "  standeth  like  the  strong 
mountains,  his  judgments  are  like  the  great  deep  ;  he 
is  a  righteous  judge,  strong  and  patient,  who  is  pro- 
voked every  day."  1  This  is  the  Hebrew's  first  and 
deepest  conception  of  God, — as  the  source  of  the 
moral  order.  But  God  is  also,  to  the  Hebrew,  "  our 
rock,  which  is  higher  than  we,"  the  power  by  which 
we  have  been  "  upholden  ever  since  we  were  born," 
that  has  "  fashioned  us  and  laid  his  hand  upon  us  " 
and  envelops  us  on  every  side,  that  has  "made  us 
fearfully  and  wonderfully,"  and  whose  "  mercy  is 
over  all  his  works."2  He  is  the  power  that  "saves 
both  man  and  beast,  gives  them  drink  of  his  pleasures 
as  out  of  the  river,"  and  with  whom  is  "  the  well  of 
life."  3  In  his  speech  at  Athens,  Paul  shows  how  full 
he,  too,  was  of  this  feeling;  and  in  the  famous 
passage  in  the  first  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Bomans,  where  he  asserts  the  existence  of  the  natural 
moral  law,  the  source  he  assigns  to  this  law  is  not 
merely  God  in  conscience,  the  righteous  judge,  but 
God  in  the  world  and  the  workings  of  the  world,  the 

1  Ps.  xxxvi.  6  ;  vii.  11. 

3  Ps.  lxi.  2  ;  lxxxi.  6  ;  cxxxix.  5,  14 ;  cxlv.  9. 

8  Ps.  xxxvi.  6,  8,  9. 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  49 

eternal  and  divine  power  from  which  all  life  and 
wholesome  energy  proceed.1 

This  element  in  which  we  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being,  which  stretches  around  and  beyond  the 
strictly  moral  element  in  us,  around  and  beyond  the 
finite  sphere  of  what  is  originated,  measured,  and 
controlled  by  our  own  understanding  and  will, — this 
infinite  element  is  very  present  to  Paul's  thoughts, 
and  makes  a  profound  impression  on  them.  By  this 
element  we  are  receptive  and  influenced,  not  origina- 
tive and  influencing;  now,  we  all  of  us  receive  far 
more  than  we  originate.  Our  pleasure  from  a  spring 
day  we  do  not  make ;  our  pleasure,  even,  from  an 
approving  conscience  we  do  not  make.  And  yet  we 
feel  that  both  the  one  pleasure  and  the  other  can, 
and  often  do,  work  with  us  in  a  wonderful  way  for 
our  good.  So  we  get  the  thought  of  an  impulsion 
outside  ourselves  which  is  at  once  awful  and  bene- 
ficent. "  No  man,"  as  the  Hebrew  psalm  says,  "  hath 
quickened  his  own  soul."2  "  I  know,"  says  Jeremiah, 
"  that  the  way  of  man  is  not  in  himself ;  it  is  not  in 
man  that  walketh  to  direct  his  steps."3  Most  true 
and  natural  is  this  feeling ;  and  the  greater  men  are, 
the  more  natural  is  this  feeling  to  them.  Great  men 
like  Sylla  and  Napoleon  have  loved  to  attribute  their 
success  to  their  fortune,  their  star;  religious  great 
men  have  loved  to  say  that  their  sufficiency  was  of 
God.4  But  through  every  great  spirit  runs  a  train  of 
feeling  of  this  sort ;  and  the  power  and  depth  which 

1  Rom.  i.  19-21.  2  psaim  xxn.  29. 

3  Jer.  x.  23.  4  2  Cor.  iii.  5. 

VOL.  VII.  E 


50  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [il. 

there  undoubtedly  is  in  Calvinism,  comes  from  Cal- 
vinism's being  overwhelmed  by  it.  Paul  is  not,  like 
Calvinism,  overwhelmed  by  it ;  but  it  is  always  before 
his  mind  and  strongly  agitates  his  thoughts.  The 
voluntary,  rational,  and  human  world,  of  righteous- 
ness, moral  choice,  effort,  filled  the  first  place  in  his 
spirit.  But  the  necessary,  mystical,  and  divine 
world,   of  influence,   sympathy,   emotion,   filled   the 

/second;  and  he  could  pass  naturally  from  the  one 
world  to  the  other.  The  presence  in  Paul  of  this 
twofold  feeling  acted  irresistibly  upon  his  doctrine. 
What  he  calls  "the  power  that  worketh  in  us,"1  and 
that  produces  results  transcending  all  our  expectations 
and  calculations,  he  instinctively  sought  to  combine 
with  our  personal  agencies  of  reason  and  conscience. 

Of  such  a  mysterious  power  and  its  operation 
some  clear  notion  may  be  got  by  anybody  who  has 
ever  had  any  overpowering  attachment,  or  has  been, 
according  to  the  common  expression,  in  love.  Every 
one  knows  how  being  in  love  changes  for  the  time  a 
man's  spiritual  atmosphere,  and  makes  animation  and 
buoyancy  where  before  there  was  flatness  and  dulness. 
One  may  even  say  that  this  is  the  reason  why  being 
in  love  is  so  popular  with  the  whole  human  race, — 
because  it  relieves  in  so  irresistible  and  delightful  a 
manner  the  tedium  or  depression  of  commonplace 
human  life.  And  not  only  does  it  change  the  atmo- 
sphere of  our  spirits,  making  air,  light,  and  move- 
ment where  before  was  stagnation  and  gloom,  but 
it  also  sensibly  and  powerfully  increases  our  faculties 

1  Ephesians  iii.  20. 


il]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  51 

of  action.  It  is  matter  of  the  commonest  remark  how 
a  timid  man  who  is  in  love  will  show  courage,  or  an 
indolent  man  will  show  diligence.  Nay,  a  timid  man 
who  would  be  only  the  more  paralysed  in  a  moment 
of  danger  by  being  told  that  it  is  his  bounden  duty 
as  a  man  to  show  firmness,  and  that  he  must  be  ruined 
and  disgraced  for  ever  if  he  does  not,  will  show  firm- 
ness quite  easily  from  being  in  love.  An  indolent 
man  who  shrinks  back  from  vigorous  effort  only  the 
more  because  he  is  told  and  knows  that  it  is  a  man's 
business  to  show  energy,  and  that  it  is  shameful  in 
him  if  he  does  not,  will  show  energy  quite  easily  from 
being  in  love.  This,  I  say,  we  learn  from  the  analogy 
of  the  most  everyday  experience;  that  a  powerful 
attachment  will  give  a  man  spirits  and  confidence 
which  he  could  by  no  means  call  up  or  command  of 
himself ;  and  that  in  this  mood  he  can  do  wonders 
which  would  not  be  possible  to  him  without  it. 

We  have  seen  how  Paul  felt  himself  to  be  for  the 
sake  of  righteousness  apprehended,  to  use  his  own 
expression,  by  Christ.  "I  seek,"  he  says,  "to  appre- 
hend that  for  which  also  I  am  apprehended  by  Christ."1 
This  for  which  he  is  thus  apprehended  is, — still  to 
use  his  own  words, — the  righteousness  of  God ;  not  an 
incomplete  and  maimed  righteousness,  not  a  partial 
and  unsatisfying  establishment  of  the  law  of  the 
spirit,  dominant  to-day,  deposed  to-morrow,  effective 
at  one  or  two  points,  failing  in  a  hundred ;  no,  but 
an  entire  conformity  at  all  points  with  the  divine 
moral  order,  the  will  of  God,  and,  in  consequence, 

1  Philippians  iii.  12. 


52  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

a  sense  of  harmony  with  this  order,  of  acceptance 
with  God. 

In  some  points  Paul  had  always  served  this  order 
with  a  clear  conscience.  He  did  not  steal,  he  did 
not  commit  adultery.  But  he  was  at  the  same  time, 
he  says  himself,  "a  blasphemer  and  a  persecutor  and 
an  insulter,"1  and  the  contemplation  of  Jesus  Christ 
made  him  see  this,  impressed  it  forcibly  upon  his 
mind.  Here  was  his  greatness,  and  the  worth  of  his 
way  of  appropriating  Christ.  We  have  seen  how 
Calvinism,  too, — Calvinism  which  has  built  itself 
upon  St.  Paul, — is  a  blasphemer,  when  it  speaks  of 
good  works  done  by  those  who  do  not  hold  the  Cal- 
vinist  doctrine.  There  would  need  no  great  sensitive- 
ness of  conscience,  one  would  think,  to  show  that 
Calvinism  has  often  been,  also,  a  persecutor,  and  an 
insulter.  Calvinism,  as  well  as  Paul,  professes  to 
study  Jesus  Christ.  But  the  difference  between 
Paul's  study  of  Christ  and  Calvinism's  is  this :  that 
Paul  by  studying  Christ  got  to  know  himself  clearly, 
and  to  transform  his  narrow  conception  of  righteous- 
ness ;  while  Calvinism  studies  both  Christ  and  Paul 
after  him  to  no  such  good  purpose. 

These,  however,  are  but  the  veriest  rudiments  of 
the  history  of  Paul's  gain  from  Jesus  Christ,  as  the 
particular  impression  mentioned  is  but  the  veriest 
fragment  of  the  total  impression  produced  by  the 
contemplation  of  Christ  upon  him.  The  sum  and 
substance  of  that  total  impression  may  best  be  con- 
veyed by  two  words — without  sin. 

1  1  Tim.  i.  13. 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  53 

We  must  here  revert  to  what  we  have  already 
said  of  the  importance,  for  sound  criticism  of  a  man's 
ideas,  of  the  order  in  which  his  ideas  come.  For  us, 
who  approach  Christianity  through  a  scholastic  theo- 
logy, it  is  Christ's  divinity  which  establishes  his  being 
without  sin.  For  Paul,  who  approached  Christianity 
through  his  personal  experience,  it  was  Jesus  Christ's 
being  without  sin  which  establishes  his  divinity.  The 
large  and  complete  conception  of  righteousness  to 
which  he  himself  had  slowly  and  late,  and  only  by 
Jesus  Christ's  help,  awakened,  in  Jesus  he  seemed 
to  see  existing  absolutely  and  naturally.  The  devo- 
tion to  this  conception  which  made  it  meat  and  drink 
to  carry  it  into  effect,  a  devotion  of  which  he  himself 
was  strongly  and  deeply  conscious,  he  saw  in  Jesus 
still  stronger,  by  far,  and  deeper  than  in  himself. 
But  for  attaining  the  righteousness  of  God,  for  reach- 
ing an  absolute  conformity  with  the  moral  order  and 
with  God's  will,  he  saw  no  such  impotence  existing 
in  Jesus  Christ's  case  as  in  his  own.  For  Jesus,  the 
uncertain  conflict  between  the  law  in  our  members 
and  the  law  of  the  spirit  did  not  appear  to  exist. 
Those  eternal  vicissitudes  of  victory  and  defeat,  which 
drove  Paul  to  despair,  in  Jesus  were  absent.  Smoothly 
and  inevitably  he  followed  the  real  and  eternal  order, 
in  preference  to  the  momentary  and  apparent  order. 
Obstacles  outside  him  there  were  plenty,  but  obstacles 
within  him  there  were  none.  He  was  led  by  the 
spirit  of  God ;  he  was  dead  to  sin,  he  lived  to  God ; 
and  in  this  life  to  God  he  persevered  even  to  the 
cruel  bodily  death  of  the  cross.     As  many  as  are  led 


54  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

by  the  spirit  of  God,  says  Paul,  are  the  sons  of  God.1 
If  this  is  so  with  even  us,  who  live  to  God  so  feebly 
and  who  render  such  an  imperfect  obedience,  how 
much  more  is  he  who  lives  to  God  entirely  and  who 
renders  an  unalterable  obedience,  the  unique  and 
only  son  of  God  1 

This  is  undoubtedly  the  main  line  of  movement 
which  Paul's  ideas  respecting  Jesus  Christ  follow. 
He  had  been  trained,  however,  in  the  scholastic 
theology  of  Judaism,  just  as  we  are  trained  in  the 
scholastic  theology  of  Christianity;  would  that  we 
were  as  little  embarrassed  with  our  training  as  he  was 
with  his  !  The  Jewish  theological  doctrine  respecting 
the  eternal  word  or  wisdom  of  God,  which  was  with 
God  from  the  beginning  before  the  oldest  of  his 
works,  and  through  which  the  world  was  created,  this 
doctrine,  which  appears  in  the  Book  of  Proverbs  and 
again  in  the  Book  of  Wisdom,2  Paul  applied  to  Jesus 
Christ,  and  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians  there  is  a 
remarkable  passage 3  with  clear  signs  of  his  thus 
applying  it.  But  then  this  metaphysical  and  theo- 
logical basis  to  the  historic  being  of  Jesus  is  something 
added  by  Paul  from  outside  to  his  own  essential  ideas 
concerning  him,  something  which  fitted  them  and 
was  naturally  taken  on  to  them  ;  it  is  secondary,  it  is 
not  an  original  part  of  his  system,  much  less  the 
ground  of  it.  It  fills  a  very  different  place  in  his 
system  from  the  place  which  it  fills  in  the  system  of 
the   author  of   the  Fourth  Gospel,  who    takes   his 

1  Rom.  viii.  14.     2  Prov.  viii.  22-31 ;  and  Wisd.  vii.  25-27. 

8  Col.  i.  15-17. 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  55 

starting-point  from  it.  Paul's  starting-point,  it  can- 
not be  too  often  repeated,  is  the  idea  of  righteousness ; 
and  his  concern  with  Jesus  is  as  the  clue  to  righteous- 
ness, not  as  the  clue  to  transcendental  ontology. 
Speculations  in  this  region  had  no  overpowering 
attraction  for  Paul,  notwithstanding  the  traces  of 
an  acquaintance  with  them  which  we  find  in  his 
writings,  and  notwithstanding  the  great  activity  of 
his  intellect.  This  activity  threw  itself  with  an  un- 
erring instinct  into  a  sphere  where,  with  whatever 
travail  and  through  whatever  impediments  to  clear 
expression,  directly  practical  religious  results  might 
yet  be  won,  and  not  into  any  sphere  of  abstract 
speculation. 

Much  more  visible  and  important  than  his  identi- 
fication of  Jesus  with  the  divine  hypostasis  known  as 
the  Logos,  is  Paul's  identification  of  him  with  the 
Messiah.  Ever  present  is  his  recognition  of  him  as 
the  Messiah  to  whom  all  the  law  and  prophets 
pointed,  of  whom  the  heart  of  the  Jewish  race  was 
full,  and  on  whom  the  Jewish  instructors  of  Paul's 
youth  had  dwelt  abundantly.  The  Jewish  language 
and  ideas  respecting  the  end  of  the  world  and  the 
Messiah's  kingdom,  his  day,  his  presence,  his  appear- 
ing, his  glory,  Paul  applied  to  Jesus,  and  constantly 
used.  Of  the  force  and  reality  which  these  ideas  and 
expressions  had  for  him  there  can  be  no  question  ;  as 
to  his  use  of  them,  only  two  remarks  are  needed. 
One  is,  that  in  him  these  Jewish  ideas, — as  any  one 
will  feel  who  calls  to  mind  a  genuine  display  of  them 
like  that  in  the  Apocalypse, — are  spiritualised ;  and 


56  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [il. 

as  he  advances  in  his  course  they  are  spiritualised  in- 
creasingly. The  other  remark  is,  that  important  as 
these  ideas  are  in  Paul,  of  them,  too,  the  importance 
is  only  secondary,  compared  with  that  of  the  great 
central  matter  of  his  thoughts  :  the  righteousness  of 
God,  the  non-fulfilment  of  it  by  man,  the  fulfilment  of  it 
by  Christ. 

Once  more  we  are  led  to  a  result  favourable  to  the 
scientific  value  of  Paul's  teaching.  That  Jesus  Christ 
was  the  divine  Logos,  the  second  person  of  the 
Trinity,  science  can  neither  deny  nor  affirm.  That 
he  was  the  Jewish  Messiah,  who  will  some  day  appear 
in  the  sky  with  the  sound  of  trumpets,  to  put  an  end 
to  the  actual  kingdoms  of  the  world  and  to  establish 
his  own  kingdom,  science  can  neither  deny  nor  affirm. 
The  very  terms  of  which  these  propositions  are  com- 
posed are  such  as  science  is  unable  to  handle.  But 
that  the  Jesus  of  the  Bible  follows  the  universal 
moral  order  and  the  will  of  God,  without  being  let 
and  hindered  as  we  are  by  the  motions  of  private 
passion  and  by  self-will,  this  is  evident  to  whoever 
can  read  the  Bible  with  open  eyes.  It  is  just  what 
any  criticism  of  the  Gospel-history,  which  sees  that 
history  as  it  really  is,  tells  us ;  it  is  the  scientific 
result  of  that  history.  And  this  is  the  result  which 
pre-eminently  occupies  Paul.  Of  Christ's  life  and 
death,  the  all-importance  for  us,  according  to  Paul,  is 
that  by  means  of  them,  "  denying  ungodliness  and 
worldly  lusts,  we  should  live  soberly,  righteously, 
and  godly;"  should  be  enabled  to  "bear  fruit  to 
God"  in  "love,  joy,  peace,  long-suffering,  kindness, 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  57 

goodness,  faith,  mildness,  self-control."1  Of  Christ's 
life  and  death  the  scope  was  "  to  redeem  us  from  all 
iniquity,  and  make  us  purely  zealous  for  good  works." 
Paul  says  by  way  of  preface,  that  we  are  to  live  thus 
in  the  actual  world  which  now  is,  "with  the  expecta- 
tion of  the  appearing  of  the  glory  of  God  and 
Christ."3  By  nature  and  habit,  and  with  his  full 
belief  that  the  end  of  the  world  was  nigh  at  hand, 
Paul  used  these  words  to  mean  a  Messianic  coming 
and  kingdom.  Later  Christianity  has  transferred 
them,  as  it  has  transferred  so  much  else  of  Paul's, 
to  a  life  beyond  the  grave,  but  it  has  by  no  means 
spiritualised  them.  Paul,  as  his  spiritual  growth  ad- 
vanced, spiritualised  them  more  and  more ;  he  came 
to  think,  in  using  them,  more  and  more  of  a  gradual 
inward  transformation  of  the  world  by  a  conformity 
like  Christ's  to  the  will  of  God,  than  of  a  Messianic 
advent.  Yet  even  then  they  are  always  second  with 
him,  and  not  first ;  the  essence  of  saving  grace  is 
always  to  make  us  righteous,  to  bring  us  into  con- 
formity with  the  divine  law,  to  enable  us  to  "bear 
fruit  to  God." 

"  Jesus  Christ  gave  himself  for  us  that  he  might 
redeem  us  from  iniquity."  First  of  all,  he  rendered 
an  unbroken  obedience  to  the  law  of  the  spirit ;  he 
served  the  spirit  of  God ;  he  came,  not  to  do  his  own 
will,  but  the  will  of  God.  Now,  the  law  of  the 
spirit  makes  men  one ;  it  is  only  by  the  law  in  our 
members  that  we  are  many.      Secondly,  therefore, 

1  Tit.  ii.  12  ;  Rom.  vii.  4  ;  Gal.  v.  22,  23. 
2  Tit  ii.  14.  3  Ibid.  13. 


58  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM,  [il. 

Jesus  Christ  had  an  unfailing  sense  of  what  we  have 
called,  using  an  expressive  modern  term,  the  solidarity 
of  men  :  that  it  was  not  God's  will  that  one  of  his 
human  creatures  should  perish.  Thirdly,  Jesus  Christ 
persevered  in  this  uninterrupted  obedience  to  the 
law  of  the  spirit,  in  this  unfailing  sense  of  human 
solidarity,  even  to  the  death ;  though  everything 
befell  him  which  might  break  the  one  or  tire  out  the 
other.  Lastly,  he  had  in  himself,  in  all  he  said  and 
did,  that  ineffable  force  of  attraction  which  doubled 
the  virtue  of  everything  said  or  done  by  him. 

If  ever  there  was  a  case  in  which  the  wonder-work- 
ing power  of  attachment,  in  a  man  for  whom  the 
moral  sympathies  and  the  desire  of  righteousness 
were  all-powerful,  might  employ  itself  and  work  its 
wonders,  it  was  here.  Paul  felt  this  power  penetrate 
him ;  and  he  felt,  also,  how  by  perfectly  identifying 
himself  through  it  with  Jesus,  and  in  no  other  way, 
could  he  ever  get  the  confidence  and  the  force  to  do 
as  Jesus  did.  He  thus  found  a  point  in  which  the 
mighty  world  outside  man,  and  the  weak  world  in- 
side him,  seemed  to  combine  for  his  salvation.  The 
struggling  stream  of  duty,  which  had  not  volume 
enough  to  bear  him  to  his  goal,  was  suddenly  rein- 
forced by  the  immense  tidal  wave  of  sympathy  and 
emotion. 

To  this  new  and  potent  influence  Paul  gave  the 
name  of  faith.  More  fully  he  calls  it :  "  Faith  that 
worketh  through  love"  1  The  word  faith  points,  no 
doubt,   to   "  coming  by  hearing,"  and  has  possibly  a 

1  Gal.  v.  6. 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  59 

reminiscence,  for  Paul,  of  his  not  having  with  his  own 
waking  eyes,  like  the  original  disciples,  seen  Jesus, 
and  of  his  special  mission  being  to  Gentiles  who  had 
not  seen  Jesus  either.  But  the  essential  meaning  of 
the  word  is  "  power  of  holding  on  to  the  unseen," 
"fidelity."  Other  attachments  demand  fidelity  in 
absence  to  an  object  which,  at  some  time  or  other, 
nevertheless,  has  been  seen ;  this  attachment  demands 
fidelity  to  an  object  which  both  is  absent  and  has 
never  been  seen  by  us.  It  is  therefore  rightly  called 
not  constancy,  but  faith  ;  a  power,  pre-eminently,  of 
holding  fast  to  an  unseen  power  of  goodness.  Identifying 
ourselves  with  Jesus  Christ  through  this  attachment 
we  become  as  he  was.  We  live  with  his  thoughts 
and  feelings,  and  we  participate,  therefore,  in  his 
freedom  from  the  ruinous  law  in  our  members,  in  his 
obedience  to  the  saving  law  of  the  spirit,  in  his  con- 
formity to  the  eternal  order,  in  the  joy  and  peace  of 
his  life  to  God.  "The  law  of  the  spirit  of  life  in 
Christ  Jesus,"  says  Paul,  "  freed  me  from  the  law  of 
sin  and  death."1  This  is  what  is  done  for  us  by 
faith. 

It  is  evident  that  some  difficulty  arises  out  of 
Paul's  adding  to  the  general  sense  of  the  word  faith, 
— a  holding  fast  to  an  unseen  potver  of  goodness, — a 
particular  sense  of  his  own, — identification  tcith  Christ. 
It  will  at  once  appear  that  this  faith  of  Paul's  is  in 
truth  a  specific  form  of  holding  fast  to  an  unseen 
power  of  goodness  ;  and  that  while  it  can  properly  be 
said  of  Abraham,  for  instance,  that  he  was  justified 

1  Rom.  viii.  2. 


60  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

by  faith,  if  we  take  faith  in  its  plain  sense  of  holding 
fast  to  an  unseen  power  of  goodness,  yet  it  cannot 
without  difficulty  and  recourse  to  a  strained  figure  be 
said  of  him,  if  we  take  faith  in  Paul's  specific  sense 
of  identification  with  Christ.  Paul,  however,  un- 
doubtedly, having  conveyed  his  new  specific  sense 
into  the  word  faith,  still  uses  the  word  in  all  cases 
where,  without  this  specific  sense,  it  was  before 
applicable  and  usual ;  and  in  this  way  he  often 
creates  ambiguity.  Why,  it  may  be  asked,  does 
Paul,  instead  of  employing  a  special  term  to  denote 
his  special  meaning,  still  thus  employ  the  general 
term  faith?  We  are  inclined  to  think  it  was  from 
that  desire  to  get  for  his  words  and  thoughts  not  only 
the  real  but  also  the  apparent  sanction  and  consecra- 
tion of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  which  we  have  called 
his  tendency  to  Judaise.  It  was  written  of  the 
founder  of  Israel,  Abraham,  that  he  believed  God  and 
it  was  counted  to  him  for  righteousness.  The  prophet 
Habakkuk  had  the  famous  text :  "  The  just  shall  live 
by  faith."  1  Jesus,  too,  had  used  and  sanctioned  the 
use  of  the  word  faith  to  signify  cleaving  to  the  unseen 
God's  power  of  goodness  as  shown  in  Christ.2  Peter 
and  John  and  the  other  apostles  habitually  used  the 
word  in  the  same  sense,  with  the  modification  intro- 
duced by  Christ's  departure.  This  was  enough  to 
make  Paul  retain  for  that  vital  operation,  which  was 
the  heart  of  his  whole  religious  system,  the  name  of 
faith,  though  he  had  considerably  developed  and 
enlarged  the  name's  usual  meaning.     Fraught  with 

1  Gen.  xv.  6  ;  Habakkuk  ii.  4.  2  Mark  xi.  22. 


ii.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  61 

this  new  and  developed  sense,  the  term  does  not 
always  quite  well  suit  the  cases  to  which  it  was  in 
its  old  sense,  with  perfect  propriety,  applied ;  this, 
however,  Paul  did  not  regard.  The  term  applied 
with  undeniable  truth,  though  not  with  perfect 
adequacy,  to  the  great  spiritual  operation  whereto  he 
affixed  it ;  and  it  was  at  the  same  time  the  name 
given  to  the  crowning  grace  of  the  great  father  of 
the  Jewish  nation,  Abraham ;  it  was  the  prophet 
Habakkuk's  talismanic  and  consecrated  term,  faith. 

In  this  word  faith,  as  used  by  St.  Paul,1  we  reach 
a  point  round  which  the  ceaseless  stream  of  religious 
exposition  and  discussion  has  for  ages  circled.  Even 
for  those  who  misconceive  Paul's  line  of  ideas  most 
completely,  faith  is  so  evidently  the  central  point  in 
his  system  that  their  thoughts  cannot  but  centre  upon 
it.  Puritanism,  as  is  well  known,  has  talked  of  little 
else  but  faith.  And  the  word  is  of  such  a  nature, 
that  the  true  clue  once  lost  which  Paul  has  given  us 
to  its  meaning,  every  man  may  put  into  it  almost 
anything  he  likes,  all  the  fancies  of  his  superstition  or 
of  his  fanaticism.  To  say,  therefore,  that  to  have 
faith  in  Christ  means  to  be  attached  to  Christ,  to 
embrace  Christ,  to  be  identified  with  Christ,  is  not 
enough  ;  the  question  is,  Jbobe  attached  to  him  how, 
to  embrace  him  hoiv  ? 

A  favourite  expression  of  popular  theology  con- 

1  With  secondary  uses  of  the  word,  such  as  its  use  with  the 
article,  "the  faith,"  in  expressions  like  "the  words  of  the 
faith,"  to  signify  the  body  of  tenets  and  principles  received  by 
believers  from  the  apostle,  we  need  not  here  concern  ourselves. 
They  present  no  difficulty. 


62  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

veys  perfectly  the  popular  definition  of  faith  :  to  rest 
in  the  finished  ivork  of  the  Saviour.  In  the  scientific 
language  of  Protestant  theology,  to  embrace  Christ, 
to  have  saving  faith,  is  "to  give  our  consent  heartily 
to  the  covenant  of  grace,  and  so  to  receive  the  benefit 
of  justification,  whereby  God  pardons  all  our  sins  and 
accepts  us  as  righteous  for  the  righteousness  of  Christ 
imputed  to  us."  This  is  mere  theurgy,  in  which,  so 
far  as  we  have  yet  gone,  we  have  not  found  Paul 
dealing.  Wesley,  with  his  genius  for  godliness, 
struggled  all  his  life  for  some  deeper  and  more 
edifying  account  of  that  faith,  which  he  felt  working 
wonders  in  his  own  soul,  than  that  it  was  a  hearty 
consent  to  the  covenant  of  grace  and  an  acceptance  of 
the  benefit  of  Christ's  imputed  righteousness.  Yet 
this  amiable  and  gracious  spirit,  but  intellectually 
slight  and  shallow  compared  to  Paul,  beat  his  wings 
in  vain.  Paul,  nevertheless,  had  solved  the  problem 
for  him,  if  only  he  could  have  had  eyes  to  see  Paul's 
solution. 

"  He  that  believes  in  Christ,"  says  Wesley,  "  dis- 
cerns spiritual  things  :  he  is  enabled  to  taste,  see, 
hear,  and  feel  God."  There  is  nothing  practical  and 
solid  here.  A  company  of  Cornish  revivalists  will 
have  no  difficulty  in  tasting,  seeing,  hearing,  and 
feeling  God,  twenty  times  over,  to-night,  and  yet  may 
be  none  the  better  for  it  to-morrow  morning.  When 
Paul  said,  In  Christ  Jesus  neither  circumcision  availeth 
anything  nor  uncircumcision,  but  faith  that  worJceth  through 
love;  Have  faith  in  Christ !  these  words  did  not  mean 
for  him :    "  Give  your  hearty  belief  and  consent  to 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  G3 

the  covenant  of  grace ;  Accept  the  offered  benefit  of 
justification  through  Christ's  imputed  righteousness." 
They  did  not  mean:  "Try  and  discern  spiritual 
things,  try  and  taste,  sec,  hear,  and  feel  God."  They 
did  not  mean:  "Rest  in  the  finished  work  of  Christ 
the  Saviour. "     No,  they  meant :  Die  ivith  him  ! 

The  object  of  this  treatise  is  not  religious  edifica- 
tion, but  the  true  criticism  of  a  great  and  misunder- 
stood author.  Yet  it  is  impossible  to  be  in  presence  of 
this  Pauline  conception  of  faith  without  remarking  on 
the  incomparable  power  of  edification  which  it  contains. 
It  is  indeed  a  crowning  evidence  of  that  piercing 
practical  religious  sense  which  we  have  attributed  to 
Paul.  It  is  at  once  mystical  and  rational ;  and  it 
enlists  in  its  service  the  best  forces  of  both  worlds, — 
the  world  of  reason  and  morals,  and  the  world  of 
sympathy  and  emotion.  The  "world  of  reason  and 
duty  has  an  excellent  clue  to  action,  but  wants  motive- 
power  ;  the  world  of  sympathy  and  influence  has  an 
irresistible  force  of  motive-power,  but  wants  a  clue 
for  directing  its  exertion.  The  danger  of  the  one 
world  is  weariness  in  well-doing ;  the  danger  of  the 
other  is  sterile  raptures  and  immoral  fanaticism.  Paul 
takes  from  both  worlds  what  can  help  him,  and  leaves 
what  cannot.  The  elemental  power  of  sympathy  and 
emotion  in  us,  a  power  which  extends  beyond  the 
limits  of  our  own  will  and  conscious  activity,  which 
we  cannot  measure  and  control,  and  which  in  each  of 
us  differs  immensely  in  force,  volume,  and  mode  of 
manifestation,  he  calls  into  full  play,  and  sets  it  to 
work  with  all  its  strength  and  in  all  its  variety.      But 


64  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

one  unalterable  object  is  assigned  by  him  to  this 
power  :  to  die  ivith  Christ  to  the  law  of  the  flesh,  to 
live  tvith  Christ  to  the  law  of  the  mind. 

This  is  the  doctrine  of  the  necrosis,1 — Paul's  central 
doctrine,  and  the  doctrine  which  makes  his  profound- 
ness and  originality.  His  repeated  and  minute  lists 
of  practices  and  feelings  to  be  followed  or  suppressed, 
now  take  a  heightened  significance.  They  were  the 
matter  by  which  his  faith  tried  itself  and  knew  itself. 
Those  multitudinous  motions  of  appetite  and  self-will 
which  reason  and  conscience  disapproved,  reason  and 
conscience  could  yet  not  govern,  and  had  to  yield  to 
them.  This,  as  we  have  seen,  is  what  drove  Paul 
almost  to  despair.  Well,  then,  how  did  Paul's  faith, 
working  through  love,  help  him  here  1  It  enabled  him 
to  reinforce  duty  by  affection.  In  the  central  need  of 
his  nature,  the  desire  to  govern  these  motions  of 
unrighteousness,  it  enabled  him  to  say  :  Die  to  them  ! 
Christ  did.  If  any  man  be  in  Christ,  said  Paul — that 
is,  if  any  man  identifies  himself  with  Christ  by  attach- 
ment so  that  he  enters  into  his  feelings  and  lives 
with  his  life, — he  is  a  new  creature ; 2  he  can  do,  and 
does,  what  Christ  did.  First,  he  suffers  with  him. 
Christ  throughout  his  life  and  in  his  death  presented 
his  body  a  living  sacrifice  to  God ;  every  self-willed 
impulse  blindly  trying  to  assert  itself  without  respect 
of  the  universal  order,  he  died  to.  You,  says  Paul  to 
his  disciple,  are  to  do  the  same.  Never  mind  how 
various  and  multitudinous  the  impulses  are  :  impulses 
to  intemperance,  concupiscence,  covetousness,  pride, 
1  2  Cor.  iv.  10.  2  2  Cor.  v.  17. 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  65 

sloth,  envy,  malignity,  anger,  clamour,  bitterness, 
harshness,  unmercifulness.  Die  to  them  all,  and  to 
each  as  it  comes !  Christ  did.  If  you  cannot,  your 
attachment,  your  faith,  must  be  one  that  goes  but  a 
very  little  way.  In  an  ordinary  human  attachment, 
out  of  love  to  a  woman,  out  of  love  to  a  friend,  out 
of  love  to  a  child,  you  can  suppress  quite  easily, 
because  by  sympathy  you  enter  into  their  feelings, 
this  or  that  impulse  of  selfishness  which  happens  to 
conflict  with  them,  and  which  hitherto  you  have 
obeyed.  All  impulses  of  selfishness  conflict  with 
Christ's  feelings,  he  showed  it  by  dying  to  them  all ; 
if  you  are  one  with  him  by  faith  and  sympathy,  you 
can  die  to  them  also.  Then,  secondly,  if  you  thus 
die  with  him,  you  become  transformed  by  the  renew- 
ing of  your  mind,  and  rise  with  him.  The  law  of  the 
spirit  of  life  which  is  in  Christ  becomes  the  law  of 
your  life  also,  and  frees  you  from  the  law  of  sin  and 
death.  You  rise  with  him  to  that  harmonious  con- 
formity with  the  real  and  eternal  order,  that  sense  of 
pleasing  God  who  trieth  the  hearts,  which  is  life  and 
peace,  and  which  grows  more  and  more  till  it  becomes 
glory.  If  you  suffer  with  him,  therefore,  you  shall 
also  be  glorified  with  him. 

The  real  worth  of  this  mystical  conception  depends 
on  the  fitness  of  the  character  and  history  of  Jesus 
Christ  for  inspiring  such  an  enthusiasm  of  attachment 
and  devotion  as  that  which  Paul's  notion  of  faith 
implies.  If  the  character  and  history  are  eminently 
such  as  to  inspire  it,  then  Paul  has  no  doubt  found  a 
mighty  aid  towards  the  attainment  of  that  righteons- 

VOL.  VII.  F 


66  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

ness  of  which  Jesus  Christ's  life  afforded  the  admir- 
able pattern.  A  great  solicitude  is  always  shown  by 
popular  Christianity  to  establish  a  radical  difference 
between  Jesus  and  a  teacher  like  Socrates.  Ordinary 
theologians  establish  this  difference  by  transcendental 
distinctions  into  which  science  cannot  follow  them. 
But  what  makes  for  science  the  radical  difference 
between  Jesus  and  Socrates,  is  that  such  a  conception 
as  Paul's  would,  if  applied  to  Socrates,  be  out  of  place 
and  ineffective.  Socrates  inspired  boundless  friend- 
ship and  esteem ;  but  the  inspiration  of  reason  and 
conscience  is  the  one  inspiration  which  comes  from 
him,  and  which  impels  us  to  live  righteously  as  he 
did.  A  penetrating  enthusiasm  of  love,  sympathy, 
pity,  adoration,  reinforcing  the  inspiration  of  reason 
and  duty,  does  not  belong  to  Socrates.  With  Jesus 
it  is  different.  On  this  point  it  is  needless  to  argue ; 
history  has  proved.  In  the  midst  of  errors  the  most 
prosaic,  the  most  immoral,  the  most  unscriptural,  con- 
cerning God,  Christ,  and  righteousness,  the  immense 
emotion  of  love  and  sympathy  inspired  by  the  person 
and  character  of  Jesus  has  had  to  work  almost  by 
itself  alone  for  righteousness  ;  and  it  has  worked 
wonders.  The  surpassing  religious  grandeur  of  Paul's 
conception  of  faith  is  that  it  seizes  a  real  salutary 
emotional  force  of  incalculable  magnitude,  and  rein- 
forces moral  effort  with  it. 

Paul's  mystical  conception  is  not  complete  without 
its  relation  of  us  to  our  fellow -men,  as  well  as  its 
relation  of  us  to  Jesus  Christ.  Whoever  identifies 
himself  with  Christ,  identifies  himself  with  Christ's 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  67 

idea  of  the  solidarity  of  men.  The  whole  race  is  con- 
ceived as  one  body,  having  to  die  and  rise  with  Christ, 
and  forming  by  the  joint  action  of  its  regenerate 
members  the  mystical  body  of  Christ.  Hence  the 
truth  of  that  which  Bishop  Wilson  says  :  "  It  is  not 
so  much  our  neighbour's  interest  as  our  own  that  we 
love  him."  Jesus  Christ's  life,  with  which  we  by 
faith  identify  ourselves,  is  not  complete,  his  aspiration 
after  the  eternal  order  is  not  satisfied,  so  long  as  only 
Jesus  himself  follows  this  order,  or  only  this  or  that 
individual  amongst  us  men  follows  it.  The  same  law ~ 
of  emotion  and  sympathy,  therefore,  which  prevails 
in  our  inward  self-discipline,  is  to  prevail  in  our  deal- 
ings with  others.  The  motions  of  sin  in  ourselves 
we  succeed  in  mortifying,  not  by  saying  to  ourselves 
that  they  are  sinful,  but  by  sympathy  with  Christ 
in  his  mortification  of  them.  In  like  manner,  our 
duties  towards  our  neighbour  we  perform,  not  in 
deference  to  external  commands  and  prohibitions, 
but  through  identifying  ourselves  with  him  by  sym- 
pathy with  Christ  who  identified  himself  with  him. 
Therefore,  we  owe  no  man  anything  but  to  love  one 
another ;  and  he  who  loves  his  neighbour  fulfils  the 
law  towards  him,  because  he  seeks  to  do  him  good 
and  forbears  to  do  him  harm  just  as  if  he  was 
himself. 

Mr.  Lecky  cannot  see  that  the  command  to  speak 
the  truth  to  one's  neighbour  is  a  command  which  has 
a  natural  sanction.  But  according  to  these  Pauline 
ideas  it  has  a  clear  natural  sanction.  For,  if  my 
neighbour  is  merely  an  extension  of  myself,  deceiving 


68  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

my  neighbour  is  the  same  as  deceiving  myself ;  and 
than  self-deceit  there  is  nothing  by  nature  more 
baneful.  And  on  this  ground  Paul  puts  the  injunc- 
tion. He  says :  "  Speak  every  man  truth  to  his 
neighbour,  for  we  are  members  one  of  another."1 
This  direction  to  identify  ourselves  in  Jesus  Christ 
with  our  neighbours  is  hard  and  startling,  no  doubt, 
like  the  direction  to  identify  ourselves  with  Jesus  and 
die  with  him.  But  it  is  also,  like  that  direction,  in- 
spiring ;  and  not,  like  a  set  of  mere  mechanical  com- 
mands and  prohibitions,  lifeless  and  unaiding.  It 
shows  a  profound  practical  religious  sense,  and  rests 
upon  facts  of  human  nature  which  experience  can 
follow  and  appreciate. 

The  three  essential  terms  of  Pauline  theology  are 
not,  therefore,  as  popular  theology  makes  them : 
calling,  justification,  sanctification.  They  are  rather 
these :  dying  with  Christ,  resurrection  from  the  dead, 
growing  into  Christ?  The  order  in  which  these  terms 
are  placed  indicates,  what  we  have  already  pointed 
out  elsewhere,  the  true  Pauline  sense  of  the  expres- 
sion, resurrection  from  the  dead.  In  Paul's  ideas  the 
expression  has  no  essential  connection  with  physical 
death.  It  is  true,  popular  theology  connects  it  with 
this  almost  exclusively,  and  regards  any  other  use  of 
it  as  purely  figurative  and  secondary.  For  popular 
theology,  Christ's  resurrection  is  his  bodily  resurrec- 
tion on  earth  after  his  physical  death  on  the  cross ; 

1  Eph.  iv.  25. 

2  airodaveiv  criV  Xptcrry,    Col.   ii.   20  ;  i^avdaraais  iK  vek'pQv, 
Phil.  iii.  11  ;  atii-yc-is  els  Xpiar6v,  Eph.  iv.  15. 


ii.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  69 

the  believer's  resurrection  is  his  bodily  resurrection 
in  a  future  world,  the  golden  city  of  our  hymns  and 
of  the  Apocalypse.  For  this  theology,  the  force  of 
Christ's  resurrection  is  that  it  is  a  miracle  which 
guarantees  the  promised  future  miracle  of  our  own 
resurrection.  It  is  a  common  remark  with  Biblical 
critics,  even  with  able  and  candid  Biblical  critics, 
that  Christ's  resurrection,  in  this  sense  of  a  physical 
miracle,  is  the  central  object  of  Paul's  thoughts  and 
the  foundation  of  all  his  theology.  Nay,  the  pre- 
occupation with  this  idea  has  altered  the  very  text  of 
our  documents ;  so  that  whereas  Paul  wrote,  "  Christ 
died  and  lived,"  we  read,  "  Christ  died  and  rose  again 
and  revived."1  But  whoever  has  carefully  followed 
Paul's  line  of  thought  as  we  have  endeavoured  to 
trace  it,  will  see  that  in  his  mature  theology,  as  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans  exhibits  it,  it  cannot  be  this 
physical  and  miraculous  aspect  of  the  resurrection 
which  holds  the  first  place  in  his  mind;  for  under 
this  aspect  the  resurrection  does  not  fit  in  with  the 
ideas  which  he  is  developing. 

Not  for  a  moment  do  we  deny  that  in  Paul's 
earlier  theology,  and  notably  in  the  Epistles  to  the 
Thessalonians  and  Corinthians,  the  physical  and 
miraculous  aspect  of  the  resurrection,  both  Christ's 
and  the  believer's,  is  primary  and  predominant.  Not 
for  a  moment  do  we  deny  that  to  the  very  end  of  his 
life,  after  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  after  the  Epistle 
to  the  Philippians,  if  he  had  been  asked  whether  he 
held  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  in  the  physical 

1  Rom.  xiv.  9. 


70  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

and  miraculous  sense,  as  well  as  in  his  own  spiritual 
and  mystical  sense,  he  would  have  replied  with  entire 
conviction  that  he  did.  Very  likely  it  would  have 
been  impossible  to  him  to  imagine  his  theology  with- 
out it.      But : — 

"Below  the  surface-stream,  shallow  and  light, 
Of  what  we  say  we  feel — below  the  stream, 
As  light,  of  what  we  think  we  feel — there  flows 
With  noiseless  current  strong,  obscure  and  deep, 
The  central  stream  of  what  we  feel  indeed  ; " 

and  by  this  alone  are  we  truly  characterised.  Paul's 
originality  lies  in  the  effort  to  find  a  moral  side  and 
significance  for  all  the  processes,  however  mystical,  of 
the  religious  life,  with  a  view  of  strengthening,  in 
this  way,  their  hold  upon  us  and  their  command 
of  all  our  nature.  Sooner  or  later  he  was  sure  to  be 
drawn  to  treat  the  process  of  resurrection  with  this 
endeavour.  He  did  so  treat  it ;  and  what  is  original 
and  essential  in  him  is  his  doing  so. 

Paul's  conception  of  life  and  death  inevitably  came 
to  govern  his  conception  of  resurrection.  What  in- 
deed, as  we  have  seen,  is  for  Paul  life,  and  what  is 
death  ?  Not  the  ordinary  physical  life  and  death. 
Death,  for  him,  is  living  after  the  flesh,  obedience  to 
sin ;  life  is  mortifying  by  the  spirit  the  deeds  of  the 
flesh,  obedience  to  righteousness.  Resurrection,  in  its 
essential  sense,  is  therefore  for  Paul,  the  rising,  within 
the  sphere  of  our  visible  earthly  existence,  from  death 
in  this  sense  to  life  in  this  sense.  It  is  indubitable 
that,  so  far  as  the  human  believer's  resurrection  is 
concerned,  this  is  so.     Else,  how  could  Paul  say  to 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  71 

the  Colossians  (to  take  only  one  out  of  a  hundred 
clear  texts  showing  the  same  thing) :  "  If  ye  then  he 
risen  with  Christ,  seek  the  things  that  are  above."1 
But  when  Paul  repeats  again  and  again,  in  the  Epistle 
to  the  Eomans,  that  the  matter  of  our  faith  is  "  that 
God  raised  Jesus  from  the  dead,"  the  essential  mean- 
ing of  this  resurrection,  also,  is  just  the  same.  Real 
life  for  Paul  begins  with  the  mystical  death  which 
frees  us  from  the  dominion  of  the  external  shalls  and 
shall  nois  of  the  law.2  From  the  moment,  therefore, 
that  Jesus  Christ  was  content  to  do  God's  will,  he 
died.  Paul's  point  is,  that  Jesus  Christ  in  his  earthly 
existence  obeyed  the  law  of  the  spirit,  and  bore  fruit 
to  God ;  and  that  the  believer  should,  in  his  earthly 
existence,  do  the  same.  That  Christ  "  died  to  sin," 
that  he  "  pleased  not  himself,"  and  that,  consequently, 
through  all  his  life  here,  he  was  risen  and  living  to 
God,  is  what  occupies  Paul.  Christ's  physical  resur- 
rection after  he  was  crucified  is  neither  in  point  of 
time  nor  in  point  of  character  the  resurrection  on 
which  Paul,  following  his  essential  line  of  thought, 
wanted  to  fix  the  believer's  mind.  The  resurrection 
Paul  was  striving  after  for  himself  and  others  was  a 
resurrection  noiv,  and  a  resurrection  to  righteousness.3 

1  Col.  iii.  1.  2  See  Rom.  vii.  1-6. 

a  It  has  been  said  that  this  was  the  error  of  Hyrnenpeus  and 
Philetas  (2  Tim.  ii.  17).  It  might  be  rejoined,  with  much 
plausibility,  that  their  error  was  the  error  of  popular  theology, 
the  fixing  the  attention  on  the  past  miracle  of  Christ's  physical 
resurrection,  and  losing  sight  of  the  continuing  miracle  of  the 
Christian's  spiritual  resurrection.  Probably,  however,  Hymen- 
seus  and  Philetas  controverted  some  of  Paul's  tenets  respecting 
the  approaching  Messianic  advent  and  the  resurrection  then  to 


72  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [11. 

But  Jesus  Christ's  obeying  God  and  not  pleasing 
himself  culminated  in  his  death  on  the  cross.  All 
through  his  career,  indeed,  Jesus  Christ  pleased  not 
himself  and  died  to  sin.  But  so  smoothly  and  so  in- 
evitably, as  we  have  before  said,  did  he  always  appear 
to  follow  that  law  of  the  moral  order,  which  to  us 
it  costs  such  effort  to  obey,  that  only  in  the  very 
wrench  and  pressure  of  his  violent  death  did  any  pain 
of  dying,  any  conflict  between  the  law  of  the  flesh 
and  the  law  of  the  spirit,  in  Christ  become  visible. 
But  the  Christian  needs  to  find  in  Christ's  dying  to 
sin  a  fellowship  of  suffering  and  a  conformity  of  death. 
Well,  then,  the  point  of  Christ's  trial  and  crucifixion 
is  the  only  point  in  his  career  where  the  Christian 
can  palpably  touch  what  he  seeks.  In  all  dying  there 
is  struggle  and  weakness ;  in  our  dying  to  sin  there 
is  great  struggle  and  weakness.  But  only  jn  his 
crucifixion  can  we  see,  in  Jesus  Christ,  a  place  for 
struggle  and  weakness.1  That  self-sacrificing  obedi- 
ence of  Jesus  Christ's  whole  life,  which  was  summed 
up  in  this  great,  final  act  of  his  crucifixion,  and  which 
is  palpable  as  sacrifice,  obedience,  dolorous  effort,  only 
there,  is,  therefore,  constantly  regarded  by  Paul  under 
the  figure  of  this  final  act,  as  is  also  the  believer's 
conformity  to  Christ's   obedience.     The  believer  is 

take  place  (1  Thess.  iv.  13-17).  If  they  rejected  these  tenets, 
they  were  right  where  Paul  was  wrong.  But  if  they  disputed 
and  separated  on  account  of  them,  they  were  heretics ;  that  is, 
they  had  their  hearts  and  minds  full  of  a  speculative  contention, 
instead  of  their  proper  chief-concern, — putting  on  the  new  man, 
and  the  imitation  of  Christ. 

1  i<TTavpwOr)  e£  avdevelas,  2  Cor.  xiii.  4. 


n.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  73 

crucified  with  Christ  when  he  mortifies  by  the  spirit 
the  deeds  of  unrighteousness ;  Christ  was  crucified 
when  he  pleased  not  himself,  and  came  to  do  not  his 
own  will  but  God's. 

It  is  the  same  with  life  as  with  death ;  it  turns  on 
no  physical  event,  but  on  that  central  concern  of 
Paul's  thoughts,  righteousness.  If  we  have  the  spirit 
of  Christ,  we  live,  as  he  did,  by  the  spirit,  "  serve  the 
spirit  of  God," 1  and  follow  the  eternal  order.  The 
spirit  of  God,  the  spirit  of  Christ  is  the  same, — the 
one  eternal  moral  order.  If  we  are  led  by  the  spirit 
of  God  we  are  the  sons  of  God,  and  share  with  Christ 
the  heritage  of  the  sons  of  God, — eternal  life,  peace, 
felicity,  glory.  The  spirit,  therefore,  is  life  because  of 
righteousness.  And  when,  through  identifying  our- 
selves with  Christ,  we  reach  Christ's  righteousness, 
then  eternal  life  begins  for  us; — a  continuous  and 
ascending  life,  for  the  eternal  order  never  dies,  and 
the  more  Ave  transform  ourselves  into  servants  of 
righteousness  and  organs  of  the  eternal  order,  the 
more  we  are  and  desire  to  be  this  eternal  order  and 
nothing  else.  Even  in  this  life  we  are  "  seated  in 
heavenly  places,"  2  as  Christ  is  ;  so  entirely,  for  Paul, 
is  righteousness  the  true  life  and  the  true  heaven. 
But  the  transformation  cannot  be  completed  here  ; 
the  physical  death  is  regarded  by  Paul  as  a  stage  at 
which  it  ceases  to  be  impeded.  However,  at  this 
stage  we  quit,  as  he  himself  says,  the  ground  of  ex- 
perience and  enter  upon  the  ground  of  hope.     But, 

1  According  to  the  true  reading  in  Phil.  iii.  3. 
2  Eph.  ii.  6. 


74  ST.  PAUL  AND  PEOTESTANTISM.  [n. 

by  a  sublime  analogy,  he  fetches  from  the  travail  of 
the  whole  universe  proof  of  the  necessity  and  bene- 
ficence of  the  law  of  transformation.  Jesus  Christ 
entered  into  his  glory  when  he  had  made  his  physical 
death  itself  a  crowning  witness  to  his  obedience  to 
righteousness ;  we,  in  like  manner,  within  the  limits 
of  this  earthly  life  and  before  we  have  yet  persevered 
to  the  end,  must  not  look  for  full  adoption,  for  the 
glorious  revelation  in  us  of  the  sons  of  God.1 

That  Paul,  as  we  have  said,  accepted  the  physical 
miracle  of  Christ's  resurrection  and  ascension  as  a 
part  of  the  signs  and  wonders  which  accompanied 
Christianity,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  Just  in  the 
same  manner  he  accepted  the  eschatology,  as  it  is 
called,  of  his  nation, — their  doctrine  of  the  final 
things  and  of  the  summons  by  a  trumpet  in  the  sky 
to  judgment ;  he  accepted  Satan,  hierarchies  of  angels, 
and  an  approaching  end  of  the  world.  What  we  deny 
is,  that  his  acceptance  of  the  former  gives  to  his 
teaching  its  essential  characters,  any  more  than  his 
acceptance  of  the  latter.  We  should  but  be  continu- 
ing, with  strict  logical  development,  Paul's  essential 
line  of  thought,  if  we  said  that  the  true  ascension  and 
glorified  reign  of  Christ  was  the  triumph  and  reign 
of  his  spirit,  of  his  real  life,  far  more  operative  after 
his  death  on  the  cross  than  before  it ;  and  that  in 
this  sense,  most  truly,  he  and  all  who  persevere  to 
the  end  as  he  did  are  "  sown  in  weakness  but  raised 
in  power."  Paul  himself,  however,  did  not  distinctly 
continue  his  thought  thus,  and  neither  will  we  do  so 

1  Rom.  viii.  18-25. 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  75 

for  him.  How  far  Paul  himself  knew  that  he  had 
gone  in  his  irresistible  bent  to  find,  for  each  of  the 
data  of  his  religion,  that  side  of  moral  and  spiritual 
significance  which,  as  a  mere  sign  and  wonder,  it  had 
not  and  could  not  have, — what  data  he  himself  was 
conscious  of  having  transferred,  through  following  this 
bent,  from  the  first  rank  in  importance  to  the  second, 
— we  cannot  know  with  any  certainty.  That  the 
bent  existed,  that  Paul  felt  it  existed,  and  that  it 
establishes  a  wide  difference  between  the  earliest 
epistles  and  the  latest,  is  beyond  question.  Already, 
in  the  Second  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians,  he  declares 
that,  "  though  he  had  known  Christ  after  the  flesh, 
yet  henceforth  he  knew  him  so  no  more  ; " l  and  in 
the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  shortly  afterwards,  he 
rejects  the  notion  of  dwelling  on  the  miraculous 
Christ,  on  the  descent  into  hell  and  on  the  ascent 
into  heaven,  and  fixes  the  believer's  attention  solely 
on  the  faith  of  Christ  and  on  the  effects  produced  by 
an  acquaintance  with  it.2  In  the  same  Epistle,  in 
like  manner,  the  kingdom  of  God,  of  which  to  the 
Thessalonians  he  described  the  advent  in  such  mater- 
ialising and  popularly  Judaic  language,  has  become 
"  righteousness,  and  peace,  and  joy  in  the  holy 
spirit." 3 

These  ideas,  we  repeat,  may  never  have  excluded 
others,  which  absorbed  the  most  part  of  Paul's  con- 
temporaries as  they  absorb  popular  religion  at  this 
day.  To  popular  religion,  the  real  kingdom  of  God 
is  the  New  Jerusalem  with  its  jaspers  and  emeralds ; 

1  2  Cor.  v.  16.  2  Rom.  x.  6-10.         3  Rom.  xiv.  17. 


76  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

righteousness  and  peace  and  joy  are  only  the  king- 
dom of  God  figuratively.  The  real  sitting  in  heavenly 
places  is  the  sitting  on  thrones  in  a  land  of  pure  de- 
light after  we  are  dead ;  serving  the  spirit  of  God  is 
only  sitting  in  heavenly  places  figuratively.  Science 
exactly  reverses  this  process.  For  science,  the  spiritual 
notion  is  the  real  one,  the  material  notion  is  figurative. 
The  astonishing  greatness  of  Paul  is,  that,  coming 
when  and  where  and  whence  he  did,  he  yet  grasped 
the  spiritual  notion,  if  not  exclusively  and  fully,  yet 
firmly  and  predominantly ;  more  and  more  predomin- 
antly through  all  the  last  years  of  his  life.  And 
what  makes  him  original  and  himself,  is  not  what  he 
shares  with  his  contemporaries  and  with  modern 
popular  religion,  but  this  which  he  develops  of  his 
own ;  and  this  which  he  develops  of  his  own  is  just 
of  a  nature  to  make  his  religion  a  theology  instead  of 
a  theurgy,  and  at  bottom  a  scientific  instead  of  a  non- 
scientific  structure.  "Die  and  come  to  life!"  says 
Goethe, — an  unsuspected  witness,  assuredly,  to  the 
psychological  and  scientific  profoundness  of  Paul's 
conception  of  life  and  death: — "Die  and  come  to 
life !  for,  so  long  as  this  is  not  accomplished,  thou 
art  but  a  troubled  guest  upon  an  earth  of  gloom."1 

The  three  cardinal  points  in  Paul's  theology  are 
not  therefore,  we  repeat,  those  commonly  assigned 
by  Puritanism,  calling,  justification,  sanctification ;  but 
they  are  these :  dying  with  Christ,  resurrection  from 

1  ' '  Stirb  und  werde  ! 

Demi  so  lang  du.  das  niclit  hast, 
Bist  du  nur  ein  triiber  Gast 
Auf  der  dunkeln  Erde." 


*T*7 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  77 

the  dead,  growing  into  Christ.  And  we  will  venture, 
moreover,  to  affirm  that  the  more  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans  is  read  and  re-read  with  a  clear  mind,  the 
more  will  the  conviction  strengthen,  that  the  sense 
indicated  by  the  order  in  which  we  here  class  the 
second  main  term  of  Paul's  conception,  is  the  essential 
sense  which  Paul  himself  attaches  to  this  term,  in 
every  single  place  where  in  that  Epistle  he  has  used 
it.  Not  tradition  and  not  theory,  but  a  simple  im- 
partial study  of  the  development  of  Paul's  central 
line  of  thought,  brings  us  to  the  conclusion,  that 
from  the  very  outset  of  the  Epistle,  where  Paul 
speaks  of  Christ  as  "  declared  to  be  the  son  of  God 
with  power  according  to  the  spirit  of  holiness  by 
resurrection  from  the  dead,"1  to  the  very  end,  the 
essential  sense  in  which  Paul  uses  the  term  resurrection 
is  that  of  a  rising,  in  this  visible  earthly  existence, 
from  the  death  of  obedience  to  blind  selfish  impulse, 
to  the  life  of  obedience  to  the  eternal  moral  order ; — 
in  Christ's  case  first,  as  the  pattern  for  us  to  follow ; 
in  the  believer's  case  afterwards,  as  following  Christ's 
pattern  through  identifying  himself  with  him. 

We  have  thus  reached  Paul's  fundamental  concep- 
tion without  even  a  glimpse  of  the  fundamental  con- 
ceptions of  Puritanism,  which,  nevertheless,  professes 
to  have  learnt  its  doctrine  from  St.  Paul  and  from 
his  Epistle  to  the  Romans.  Once,  for  a  moment,  the 
term  faith  brought  us  in  contact  with  the  doctrine  of 
Puritanism,  but  only  to  see  that  the  essential  sense 
given  to  this  word  by  Paul  Puritanism  had  missed 

1  Bom.  i.  4. 


78  ST.  PAUL  AND  PEOTESTANTISM.  [it. 

entirely.  Other  parts,  then,  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans  than  those  by  which  we  have  been  occupied 
must  have  chiefly  fixed  the  attention  of  Puritanism. 
And  so  it  has  in  truth  been.  Yet  the  parts  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans  that  have  occupied  us  are  un- 
doubtedly the  parts  which  not  our  own  theories  and 
inclinations, — for  we  have  approached  the  matter 
without  any, — but  an  impartial  criticism  of  Paul's 
real  line  of  thought,  must  elevate  as  the  most  import- 
ant. If  a  somewhat  pedantic  form  of  expression  may 
be  forgiven  for  the  sake  of  clearness,  we  may  say 
that  of  the  eleven  first  chapters  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans, — the  chapters  which  convey  Paul's  theology, 
though  not,  as  we  have  seen,  with  any  scholastic  pur- 
pose or  in  any  formal  scientific  mode  of  exposition, — 
of  these  eleven  chapters,  the  first,  second,  and  third 
are,  in  a  scale  of  importance  fixed  by  a  scientific 
criticism  of  Paul's  line  of  thought,  sub-primary ;  the 
fourth  and  fifth  are  secondary ;  the  sixth  and  eighth 
are  primary ;  the  seventh  chapter  is  sub-primary ;  the 
ninth,  tenth,  and  eleventh  chapters  are  secondary. 
Furthermore,  to  the  contents  of  the  separate  chapters 
themselves  this  scale  must  be  carried  on,  so  far  as  to 
mark  that  of  the  two  great  primary  chapters,  the 
sixth  and  the  eighth,  the  eighth  is  primary  down 
only  to  the  end  of  the  twenty -eighth  verse ;  from 
thence  to  the  end  it  is,  however  eloquent,  yet  for 
the  purpose  of  a  scientific  criticism  of  Paul's  essential 
theology,  only  secondary. 

The  first  chapter  is  to  the  Gentiles.     Its  purport 
is :  You  have  not  righteousness.     The  second  is  to 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  79 

the  Jews ;  and  its  purport  is :  No  more  have  you, 
though  you  think  you  have.  The  third  chapter 
announces  faith  in  Christ  as  the  one  source  of  right- 
eousness for  all  men.  The  fourth  chapter  gives  to 
the  notion  of  righteousness  through  faith  the  sanction 
of  the  Old  Testament  and  of  the  history  of  Abraham. 
The  fifth  insists  on  the  causes  for  thankfulness  and 
exultation  in  the  boon  of  righteousness  through  faith 
in  Christ ;  and  applies  illustratively,  with  this  design, 
the  history  of  Adam.  The  sixth  chapter  comes  to 
the  all -important  question:  "What  is  that  faith  in 
Christ  which  I,  Paul,  mean  1 " — and  answers  it.  The 
seventh  illustrates  and  explains  the  answer.  But  the 
eighth,  down  to  the  end  of  the  twenty-eighth  verse, 
develops  and  completes  the  answer.  The  rest  of  the 
eighth  chapter  expresses  the  sense  of  safety  and 
gratitude  which  the  solution  is  fitted  to  inspire.  The 
ninth,  tenth,  and  eleventh  chapters  uphold  the  second 
chapter's  thesis, — so  hard  to  a  Jew,  so  easy  to  us, — 
that  righteousness  is  not  by  the  Jewish  law;  but 
dwell  with  hope  and  joy  on  a  final  result  of  things 
which  is  to  be  favourable  to  Israel. 

We  shall  be  pardoned  this  somewhat  formal  analysis 
in  consideration  of  the  clearness  with  which  it  enables 
us  to  survey  the  Puritan  scheme  of  original  sin,  pre- 
destination, and  justification.  The  historical  trans- 
gression of  Adam  occupies,  it  will  be  observed,  in 
Paul's  ideas  by  no  means  the  primary,  fundamental, 
all -important  place  which  it  holds  in  the  ideas  of 
Puritanism.  "This"  (the  transgression  of  Adam) 
"  is  our  original  sin,  the  bitter  root  of  all  our  actual 


80  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

transgressions  in  thought,  word,  and  deed."  Ah,  no! 
Paul  did  not  go  to  the  Book  of  Genesis  to  get  the 
real  testimony  about  sin.  He  went  to  experience  for 
it.  "I see,"  he  says,  "  a  law  in  my  members  fighting 
against  the  law  of  my  mind,  and  bringing  me  into 
captivity."1  This  is  the  essential  testimony  respect- 
ing the  rise  of  sin  to  Paul, — this  rise  of  it  in  his  own 
heart  and  in  the  heart  of  all  the  men  who  hear  him. 
At  quite  a  later  stage  in  his  conception  of  the  religious 
life,  in  quite  a  subordinate  capacity,  and  for  the  mere 
purpose  of  illustration,  comes  in  the  allusion  to  Adam 
and  to  what  is  called  original  sin.  Paul's  desire  for 
righteousness  has  carried  him  to  Christ  and  to  the 
conception  of  the  righteousness  which  is  of  God  by 
faith,  and  he  is  expressing  his  gratitude,  delight, 
wonder,  at  the  boon  he  has  discovered.  For  the  pur- 
pose of  exalting  it  he  reverts  to  the  well-known  story 
of  Adam.  It  cannot  even  be  said  that  Paul  Judaises 
in  his  use  here  of  this  story ;  so  entirely  does  he  sub- 
ordinate it  to  his  purpose  of  illustration,  using  it  just 
as  he  might  have  used  it  had  he  believed,  which  un- 
doubtedly he  did  not,  that  it  was  merely  a  symbolical 
legend,  having  the  advantage  of  being  perfectly 
familiar  to  himself  and  his  hearers.  "  Think,"  he 
says,  "how  in  Adam's  fall  one  man's  one  transgression 
involved  all  men  in  punishment;  then  estimate  the 
blessedness  of  our  boon  in  Christ,  where  one  man's 
one  righteousness  involves  a  world  of  transgressors 
in  blessing !  "2  This  is  not  a  scientific  doctrine  of 
corruption   inherited   through  Adam's  fall ;    it  is  a 

1  Rom.  vii.  23.  2  Rom.  v.  12-21. 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  81 

rhetorical  use  of  Adam's  fall  in   a  passing  allusion 
to  it. 

We  come  to  predestination.  We  have  seen  how 
strong  was  Paul's  consciousness  of  that  power,  not 
ourselves,  in  which  we  live  and  move  and  have  our 
being.  The  sense  of  life,  peace,  and  joy,  which 
comes  through  identification  with  Christ,  brings  with 
it  a  deep  and  grateful  consciousness  that  this  sense 
is  none  of  our  own  getting  and  making.  No,  it  is 
grace,  it  is  the  free  gift  of  God,  who  gives  abundantly 
beyond  all  that  we  ask  or  think,  and  calls  things  that 
are  not  as  though  they  were.  "It  is  not  of  him  that 
willeth  or  of  him  that  runneth,  but  of  God  that 
showeth  mercy."1  As  moral  agents,  for  whom  alone 
exist  all  the  predicaments  of  merit  and  demerit,  praise 
and  blame,  effort  and  failure,  vice  and  virtue,  we  are 
impotent  and  lost; — we  are  saved  through  that  in 
us  which  is  passive  and  involuntary ;  we  are  saved 
through  our  affections,  it  is  as  beings  acted  upon  and 
influenced  that  we  are  saved !  Well  might  Paul  cry 
out,  as  this  mystical  but  profound  and  beneficent 
conception  filled  his  soul :  "All  things  work  together 
for  good  to  them  that  love  God,  to  them  who  are  the 
called  according  to  his  purpose."2  Well  might  he 
say,  in  the  gratitude  which  cannot  find  words  enough 
to  express  its  sense  of  boundless  favour,  that  those 
who  reached  peace  with  God  through  identification 
with  Christ  were  vessels  of  mercy,  marked  from  end- 
less ages ;  that  they  had  been  foreknown,  predesti- 
nated, called,  justified,  glorified. 

1  Rom.  ix.  16.  Rom.  viii.  28. 

VOL.  VII.  G 


82  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

It  may  be  regretted,  for  the  sake  of  the  clear 
understanding  of  his  essential  doctrine,  that  Paul 
did  not  stop  here.  It  might  seem  as  if  the  word 
"prothesis,"  purpose,  lured  him  on  into  speculative 
mazes,  and  involved  him,  at  last,  in  an  embarrass- 
ment, from  which  he  impatiently  tore  himself  by  the 
harsh  and  unedifying  image  of  the  clay  and  the  potter. 
But  this  is  not  so.  These  allurements  of  speculation, 
which  have  been  fatal  to  so  many  of  his  interpreters, 
never  mastered  Paul.  He  was  led  into  difficulty  by 
the  tendency  which  we  have  already  noticed  as  making 
his  real  imperfection  both  as  a  thinker  and  as  a  writer, 
— the  tendency  to  Judaise. 

Already,  in  the  fourth  chapter,  this  tendency  had 
led  him  to  seem  to  rest  his  doctrine  of  justification 
by  faith  upon  the  case  of  Abraham,  whereas,  in  truth, 
it  needs  all  the  goodwill  in  the  world,  and  some  effort 
of  ingenuity,  even  to  bring  the  case  of  Abraham  within 
the  operation  of  this  doctrine.  That  righteousness  is 
life,  that  all  men  by  themselves  fail  of  righteousness, 
that  only  through  identification  with  Jesus  Christ 
can  they  reach  it, — these  propositions,  for  us  at  any 
rate,  prove  themselves  much  better  than  they  are 
proved  by  the  thesis  that  Abraham  in  old  age  believed 
God's  promise  that  his  seed  should  yet  be  as  the  stars 
for  multitude,  and  that  this  was  counted  to  him  for 
righteousness.  The  sanction  thus  apparently  given 
to  the  idea  that  faith  is  a  mere  belief,  or  opinion  of 
the  mind,  has  put  thousands  of  Paul's  readers  on  a 
false  track. 

But  Paul's  Judaising  did  not  end  here.     To  estab- 


ii. J  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  83 

lish  his  doctrine  of  righteousness  by  faith,  he  had  to 
eradicate  the  notion  that  his  people  were  specially 
privileged,  and  that,  having  the  Mosaic  law,  they  did 
not  need  anything  farther.  For  us,  this  one  verse  of 
the  tenth  chapter :  There  is  no  difference  between  Jew 
and  Gi'eek,  for  it  is  the  same  Lord  of  all,  who  is  rich  to 
all  that  call  upon  him,  —  and  these  four  words  of 
another  verse  :  For  righteousness,  heart-faith  necessary  ! 
effect  far  more  for  Paul's  object  than  his  three  chap- 
ters bristling  with  Old  Testament  quotations.  By 
quotation,  however,  he  was  to  proceed,  in  order  to 
invest  his  doctrine  with  the  talismanic  virtues  of  a 
verbal  sanction  from  the  law  and  the  prophets.  He 
shows,  therefore,  that  the  law  and  the  prophets  had 
said  that  only  a  remnant,  an  elect  remnant,  of  Israel 
should  be  saved,  and  that  the  rest  should  be  blinded. 
But  to  say  that  peace  with  God  through  Jesus  Christ 
inspires  such  an  abounding  sense  of  gratitude,  and  of 
its  not  being  our  work,  that  we  can  only  speak  of 
ourselves  as  called  and  chosen  to  it,  is  one  thing  \  in 
so  speaking,  we  are  on  the  ground  of  personal  ex- 
perience. To  say,  on  the  other  hand,  that  God  has 
blinded  and  reprobated  other  men,  so  that  they  shall 
not  reach  this  blessing,  is  to  quit  the  ground  of  per- 
sonal experience,  and  to  begin  employing  the  magni- 
fied and  non-natural  man  in  the  next  street.  We 
then  require,  in  order  to  account  for  his  proceedings, 
such  an  analogy  as  that  of  the  clay  and  the  potter. 

This  is  Calvinism,  and  St.  Paul  undoubtedly  falls 
into  it.  But  the  important  thing  to  remark  is,  that 
this  Calvinism,  which  with  the  Calvinist  is  primary, 


84  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  .  [n. 

is  with  Paul  secondary,  or  even  less  than  secondary. 
What  with  Calvinists  is  their  fundamental  idea,  the 
centre  of  their  theology,  is  for  Paul  an  idea  added 
to  his  central  ideas,  and  extraneous  to  them ;  brought 
in  incidentally,  and  due  to  the  necessities  of  a  bad 
mode  of  recommending  and  enforcing  his  thesis.  It 
is  as  if  Newton  had  introduced  into  his  exposition  of 
the  law  of  gravitation  an  incidental  remark,  perhaps 
erroneous,  about  light  or  colours ;  and  we  were  then 
to  make  this  remark  the  head  and  front  of  Newton's 
law.  The  theological  idea  of  reprobation  was  an  idea 
of  Jewish  theology  as  of  ours,  an  idea  familiar  to  Paul 
and  a  part  of  his  training,  an  idea  which  probably 
he  never  consciously  abandoned.  But  its  complete 
secondariness  in  him  is  clearly  established  by  other 
considerations  than  those  which  we  have  drawn  from 
the  place  and  manner  of  his  introduction  of  it.  The 
very  phrase  about  the  clay  and  the  potter  is  not  Paul's 
own ;  he  does  but  repeat  a  stock  theological  figure. 
Isaiah  had  said :  "0  Lord,  we  are  the  clay,  and  thou 
our  potter,  and  we  are  all  the  work  of  thy  hand."1 
Jeremiah  had  said,  in  the  Lord's  name,  to  Israel : 
"  Behold,  as  the  clay  in  the  potter's  hand,  so  are  ye 
in  mine  hand,  O  house  of  Israel."2  And  the  son  of 
Sirach  comes  yet  nearer  to  Paul's  very  words :  "  As 
the  clay  is  in  the  potter's  hand  to  fashion  it  at  his 
pleasure,  so  man  is  in  the  hand  of  him  that  made 
him,  to  render  to  them  as  liketh  him  best."3  Is 
an  original  man's  essential,  characteristic  idea,  that 

]   Isaiah  lxiv.  8.  2  Jeremiah  xviii.  6. 

3  Ecclesiasticus  xxxiii.  13. 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  85 

which  he  adopts  thus  bodily  from  some  one  else? 
But  take  Paul's  truly  essential  idea.  "We  a^e  buried 
with  Christ  through  baptism  into  death,  that  like  as 
he  was  raised  up  from  the  dead  by  the  glory  of  the 
Father,  even  so  we  also  shall  walk  in  newness  of  life."1 
Did  Jeremiah  say  that  1  Is  any  one  the  author  of  it 
except  Paul?  Then  there  should  Calvinism  have 
looked  for  Paul's  secret,  and  not  in  the  commonplace 
about  the  potter  and  the  vessels  of  wrath.  A  common- 
place which  is  so  entirely  a  commonplace  to  him,  that 
he  contradicts  it  even  while  he  is  Judaising ;  for  in 
the  very  batch  of  chapters  we  are  discussing  he  says  : 
"  Whosoever  shall  .  call  upon  the  name  of  the  Lord 
shall  be  saved."2  Still  more  clear  is,  on  this  point, 
his  real  mind,  when  he  is  not  Judaising :  "  God  is 
the  saviour  of  all  men,  specially  of  those  that  believe."3 
And  anything,  finally,  which  might  seem  dangerous 
in  the  grateful  sense  of  a  calling,  choosing,  and  lead- 
ing by  eternal  goodness, — a  notion  as  natural  as  the 
Calvinistic  doctrine  of  predestination  is  monstrous, — 
Paul  abundantly  supplies  in  more  than  one  striking 
passage ;  as,  for  instance,  in  that  incomparable  third 
chapter  of  the  Philippians  (from  which,  and  from  the 
sixth  and  eighth  chapters  of  the  Romans,  Paul's  whole 
theology,  if  all  his  other  writings  were  lost,  might  be 
reconstructed),  where  he  expresses  his  humble  con- 
sciousness that  the  mystical  resurrection  which  is  his 
aim,  glory,  and  salvation,  he  does  not  yet,  and  cannot, 
completely  attain. 

The  grand  doctrine,  then,  which  Calvinistic  Puri- 

1  Rom.  vi.  4.  2  Rom.  x.  13.  3  1  Tim.  iv.  10 


86  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

tanism  has  gathered  from  Paul,  turns  out  to  be  a 
secondary  notion  of  his,  which  he  himself,  too,  has 
contradicted  or  corrected.  But,  at  any  rate,  "  Christ 
meritoriously  obtained  eternal  redemption  for  us." 
"  If  there  be  anything,"  the  quarterly  organ  of  Puri- 
tanism has  lately  told  us  in  its  hundredth  number, 
"  that  human  experience  has  made  certain,  it  is  that 
man  can  never  outgrow  his  necessity  for  the  great 
truths  and  provisions  of  the  Incarnation  and  the  sacri- 
ficial Atonement  of  the  Divine  Son  of  God."  God, 
his  justice  being  satisfied  by  Christ's  bearing  accord- 
ing to  compact  our  guilt  and  dying  in  our  stead,  is 
appeased  and  set  free  to  exercise  towards  us  his 
mercy,  and  to  justify  and  sanctify  us  in  consideration 
of  Christ's  righteousness  imputed  to  us,  if  we  give 
our  hearty  belief  and  consent  to  the  satisfaction  thus 
made.  This  hearty  belief  being  given,  "  we  rest,"  to 
use  the  consecrated  expression  already  quoted,  "in 
the  finished  work  of  a  Saviour."  This  doctrine  of 
imputed  righteousness  is  now,  as  predestination 
formerly  was,  the  favourite  thesis  of  popular  Pro- 
testant theology.  And,  like  the  doctrine  of  pre- 
destination, it  professes  to  be  specially  derived  from 
St.  Paul. 

But  whoever  has  followed  attentively  the  main 
line  of  St.  Paul's  theology,  as  we  have  tried  to  show 
it,  will  see  at  once  that  in  St.  Paul's  essential  ideas 
this  popular  notion  of  a  substitution,  and  appease- 
ment, and  imputation  of  alien  merit,  has  no  place. 
Paul  knows  nothing  of  a  sacrificial  atonement ;  what 
Paul  knows  of  is  a  reconciling  sacrifice.     The  true 


IT.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  87 

substitution,  for  Paul,  is  not  the  substitution  of  Jesus 
Christ  in  men's  stead  as  victim  on  the  cross  to  God's 
offended  justice ;  it  is  the  substitution  by  which  the 
believer,  in  his  own  person,  repeats  Jesus  Christ's 
dying  to  sin.  Paul  says,  in  real  truth,  to  our  Puri- 
tans with  their  magical  and  mechanical  salvation, 
just  what  he  said  to  the  men  of  circumcision  :  "  If  I 
preach  resting  in  the  finished  work  of  a  Saviour,  why 
am  I  yet  persecuted  ?  why  do  I  die  daily  ?  then  is  the 
stumbling-block  of  the  cross  annulled}  That  hard,  that 
well-nigh  impossible  doctrine,  that  our  whole  course 
must  be  a  crucifixion  and  a  resurrection,  even  as 
Christ's  whole  course  was  a  crucifixion  and  a  resurrec- 
tion, becomes  superfluous.  Yet  this  is  my  central 
doctrine." 

The  notion  of  God  as  a  magnified  and  non-natural 
man,  appeased  by  a  sacrifice  and  remitting  in  con- 
sideration of  it  his  wrath  against  those  who  had 
offended  him,  —  this  notion  of  God,  which  science 
repels,  was  equally  repelled,  in  spite  of  all  that  his 
nation,  time,  and  training  had  in  them  to  favour  it, 
by  the  profound  religious  sense  of  Paul.  In  none  of 
his  epistles  is  the  reconciling  work  of  Christ  really 
presented  under  this  aspect.  One  great  epistle  there 
is,  however,  which  does  apparently  present  it  under 
this  aspect, — the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews. 

Paul's  phraseology,  and  even  the  central  idea 
which  he  conveys  in  that  phraseology,  were  evidently 
well  known  to  the  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews.      Nay,   if  we  merely  sought    to  prove  a 

1  Gal.  v.  2. 


88  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

thesis,  rather  than  to  ascertain  the  real  bearing  of  the 
documents  we  canvas,  we  should  have  no  difficulty  in 
making  it  appear,  by  texts  taken  from  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews,  that  the  doctrine  of  this  epistle,  no  less 
than  the  doctrine  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Eomans, 
differs  entirely  from  the  common  doctrine  of  Puri- 
tanism. This,  however,  we  shall  by  no  means  do ; 
because  it  is  our  honest  opinion  that  the  popular 
doctrine  of  "  the  sacrificial  Atonement  of  the  Divine 
Son  of  God  "  derives,  if  not  a  real,  yet  at  any  rate  a 
strong  apparent  sanction  from  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews.  Even  supposing,  what  is  probably  true, 
that  the  popular  doctrine  is  really  the  doctrine  neither 
of  the  one  epistle  nor  of  the  other,  yet  it  must  be 
confessed  that  while  it  is  the  reader's  fault, — a  fault 
due  to  his  fixed  prepossessions,  and  to  his  own  want 
of  penetration, — if  he  gets  the  popular  doctrine  out 
of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  it  is  on  the  other  hand 
the  writer's  fault  and  no  longer  the  reader's  if  out  of 
the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  he  gets  the  popular 
doctrine.  For  the  author  of  that  epistle  is,  if  not 
subjugated,  yet  at  least  preponderantly  occupied  by 
the  idea  of  the  Jewish  system  of  sacrifices,  and  of  the 
analogies  to  Christ's  sacrifice  which  are  furnished  by 
that  system. 

If  other  proof  were  wanting,  this  alone  would 
make  it  impossible  that  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews 
should  be  Paul's ;  and  indeed  of  all  the  epistles  which 
bear  his  name,  it  is  the  only  one  which  we  may  not, 
perhaps,  in  spite  of  the  hesitation  caused  by  grave 
difficulties,  be  finally  content  to  leave  in  considerable 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  89 

part  to  him.1  Luther's  conjecture,  which  ascribes  to 
Apollos  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  derives  corrobo- 
ration from  the  one  account  of  Apollos  which  we  have ; 
that  "he  was  an  eloquent  man  and  mighty  in  the 
Scriptures."  The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  is  just  such 
a  performance  as  might  naturally  have  come  from 
an  eloquent  man  and  mighty  in  the  Scriptures ;  in 
whom  the  intelligence,  and  the  powers  of  combining, 
type-finding,  and  expounding,  somewhat  dominated 
the  religious  perceptions.  The  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  is  full  of  beauty  and  power  ;  and  what  may 
be  called  the  exterior  conduct  of  its  argument  is  as 
able  and  satisfying  as  Paul's  exterior  conduct  of  his 
argument  is  generally  embarrassed.  Its  details  are 
full  of  what  is  edifying ;  but  its  apparent  central  con- 
ception of  Christ's  death,  as  a  perfect  sacrifice  which 
consummated  the  imperfect  sacrifices  of  the  Jewish 

1  Considerations  drawn  from  date,  place,  the  use  of  single 
words,  the  development  of  a  church  organisation,  the  develop- 
ment of  an  ascetic  system,  are  not  enough  to  make  us  wholly 
take  away  certain  epistles  from  St.  Paul.  The  only  decisive 
evidence,  for  this  purpose,  is  that  internal  evidence  furnished 
by  the  whole  body  of  the  thoughts  and  style  of  an  epistle  ;  and 
this  evidence  that  Paul  was  not  its  author  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  furnishes.  From  the  like  evidence,  the  Apocalypse  is 
clearly  shown  to  be  not  by  the  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel. 
This  clear  evidence  against  the  tradition  which  assigns  them  to 
St.  Paul,  the  Epistles  to  Timothy  and  Titus  do  not  offer.  The 
serious  ground  of  difficulty  as  to  these  epistles  will  to  the  genuine 
critic  be,  that  much  in  them  fails  to  produce  that  peculiarly 
searching  effect  on  the  reader,  which  it  is  in  general  character- 
istic of  Paul's  own  real  work  to  exercise.  But  they  abound  with 
Pauline  things,  and  are,  in  any  case,  written  by  an  excellent 
man,  and  in  an  excellent  and  large  spirit. 


90  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

law,  is  a  mere  notion  of  the  understanding,  and  is  not 
a  religious  idea.  Turn  it  which  way  we  will,  the 
notion  of  appeasement  of  an  offended  God  by  vicarious 
sacrifice,  which  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  apparently 
sanctions,  will  never  truly  speak  to  the  religious  sense, 
or  bear  fruit  for  true  religion.  It  is  no  blame  to 
Apollos  if  he  was  somewhat  overpowered  by  this 
notion,  for  the  whole  world  was  full  of  it,  up  to  his 
time,  in  his  time,  and  since  his  time  ;  and  it  has 
driven  theologians  before  it  like  sheep.  The  wonder 
is,  not  that  Apollos  should  have  adopted  it,  but 
that  Paul  should  have  been  enabled,  through  the  in- 
comparable power  and  energy  of  religious  percep- 
tion informing  his  intellectual  perception,  in  reality 
to  put  it  aside.  Figures  drawn  from  the  dominant 
notion  of  sacrificial  appeasement  he  used,  for  the 
notion  has  so  saturated  the  imagination  and  language 
of  humanity  that  its  figures  pass  naturally  and  irre- 
sistibly into  all  our  speech.  Popular  Puritanism 
consists  of  the  apparent  doctrine  from  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews,  set  forth  with  Paul's  figures.  But  the 
doctrine  itself  Paul  had  really  put  aside,  and  had 
substituted  for  it  a  better. 

The  term  sacrifice,  in  men's  natural  use  of  it,  con- 
tains three  notions  :  the  notion  of  winning  the  favour 
or  buying  off  the  wrath  of  a  powerful  being  by  giving 
him  something  precious ;  the  notion  of  parting  with 
something  naturally  precious;  and  the  notion  of 
expiation,  not  now  in  the  sense  of  buying  off  wrath 
or  satisfying  a  claim,  but  of  suffering  in  that  wherein 
we  have  sinned.     The  first  notion  is,  at  bottom,  merely 


IT.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  91 

superstitious,  and  belongs  to  the  ignorant  and  fear- 
ridden  childhood  of  humanity;  it  is  the  main  element, 
however,  in  the  Puritan  conception  of  justification. 
The  second  notion  explains  itself;  it  is  the  main 
element  in  the  Pauline  conception  of  justification. 
Jesus  parted  Avith  what,  to  men  in  general,  is  the 
most  precious  of  things, — individual  self  and  selfish 
ness;  he  pleased  not  himself,  obeyed  the  spirit  of 
God,  died  to  sin  and  to  the  law  in  our  members,  con- 
summated upon  the  cross  this  death ;  here  is  Paul's 
essential  notion  of  Christ's  sacrifice. 

The  third  notion  may  easily  be  misdealt  with,  but 
it  has  a  profound  truth;  in  Paul's  conception  of  justi- 
fication there  is  much  of  it.  In  some  way  or  other, 
he  who  would  "cease  from  sin"  must  nearly  always 
"suffer  in  the  flesh."  It  is  found  to  be  true,  that 
"without  shedding  of  blood  is  no  remission."  "If 
you  can  be  good  with  pleasure,"  says  Bishop  Wilson 
with  his  genius  of  practical  religious  sense,  "  God  does 
not  envy  you  your  joy ;  but  such  is  our  corruption, 
that  every  man  cannot  be  so."  The  substantial  basis 
of  the  notion  of  expiation,  so  far  as  we  ourselves  are 
concerned,  is  the  bitter  experience  that  the  habit  of 
wrong,  of  blindly  obeying  selfish  impulse,  so  affects 
our  temper  and  powers,  that  to  withstand  selfish 
impulse,  to  do  right,  when  the  sense  of  right  awakens 
in  us,  requires  an  effort  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
actual  present  emergency.  We  have  not  only  the 
difficulty  of  the  present  act  in  itself,  we  have  the 
resistance  of  all  our  past ;  fire  and  the  knife,  cautery 
and  amputation,  are  often  necessary  in  order  to  induce 


92  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [n. 

a  vital  action,  which,  if  it  were  not  for  our  corrupting 
past,  we  might  have  obtained  from  the  natural  health- 
ful vigour  of  our  moral  organs.  This  is  the  real  basis 
of  our  personal  sense  of  the  need  of  expiating,  and 
thus  it  is  that  man  expiates. 

Not  so  the  just,  who  is  man's  ideal.  He  has  no 
indurated  habit  of  wrong,  no  perverse  temper,  no 
enfeebled  powers,  no  resisting  past,  no  spiritual  organs 
gangrened,  no  need  of  the  knife  and  fire ;  smoothly 
and  inevitably  he  follows  the  eternal  order,  and  here- 
to belongs  happiness.  What  sins,  then,  has  the  just 
to  expiate  ? — ours.  In  truth,  men's  habitual  unright- 
eousness, their  hard  and  careless  breaking  of  the 
moral  law,  do  so  tend  to  reduce  and  impair  the  stand- 
ard of  goodness,  that,  in  order  to  keep  this  standard 
pure  and  unimpaired,  the  righteous  must  actually 
labour  and  suffer  far  more  than  would  be  necessary  if 
men  were  better.  In  the  first  place,  he  has  to  under- 
go our  hatred  and  persecution  for  his  justice.  In  the 
second  place,  he  has  to  make  up  for  the  harm  caused 
by  our  continual  shortcomings,  to  step  between  us 
foolish  transgressors  and  the  destructive  natural  con- 
sequences of  our  transgression,  and,  by  a  superhuman 
example,  a  spending  himself  without  stint,  a  more 
than  mortal  scale  of  justice  and  purity,  to  save  the 
ideal  of  human  life  and  conduct  from  the  deterioration 
with  which  men's  ordinary  practice  threatens  it.  In 
this  way  Jesus  Christ  truly  "became  for  our  sakes 
poor,  though  he  was  rich,"  he  was  truly  "  bruised  for 
our  iniquities,"  he  "  suffered  in  our  behoof,"  "  bare  the 
sin  of  many,"  and  "  made  intercession  for  the  trans- 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  93 

gressors."1  In  this  way,  truly,  "he  was  sacrificed  as 
a  blameless  lamb  to  redeem  us  from  the  vain  conver- 
sation which  had  become  our  second  nature ;" 2  in  this 
way,  "  he  was  made  to  be  sin  for  us,  who  knew  no 
sin."3  Such,  according  to  that  true  and  profound 
perception  of  the  import  of  Christ's  sufferings,  which, 
in  all  St.  Paul's  writings,  and  in  the  inestimable  First 
Epistle  of  St.  Peter,  is  presented  to  us,  is  the  expia- 
tion of  Christ. 

The  notion,  therefore,  of  satisfying  and  appeasing  an 
angry  God's  ivrath,  does  not  come  into  Paul's  real  con- 
ception of  Jesus  Christ's  sacrifice.  Paul's  foremost 
notion  of  this  sacrifice  is,  that  by  it  Jesus  died  to  the 
law  of  selfish  impulse,  parted  with  what  to  men  in 
general  is  most  precious  and  near.  Paul's  second 
notion  is,  that  whereas  Jesus  suffered  in  doing  this, 
his  suffering  was  not  his  fault,  but  ours ;  not  for  his 
good,  but  for  ours.  In  the  first  aspect,  Jesus  is  the 
martyrion, — the  testimony  in  his  life  and  in  his  death,  to 
righteousness,  to  the  power  and  goodness  of  God.  In  the 
second  aspect  he  is  the  antilytron  or  ransom.  But,  in 
either  aspect,  Jesus  Christ's  solemn  and  dolorous  con- 
demnation of  sin  does  actually  loosen  sin's  hold  and 
attraction  upon  us  who  regard  it, — makes  it  easier  for 
us  to  understand  and  love  goodness,  to  rise  above  self, 
to  die  to  sin. 

Christ's  sacrifice,  however,  and  the  condemnation 
of  sin  it  contained,  was  made  for  us  while  we  were 
yet  sinners ;  it  was  made  irrespectively  of  our  power 

1  2  Cor.  viii.  9  ;  Is.  liii.  5  ;  1  Peter  ii.  21  ;  Is.  liii.  12. 

2  1  Peter  i.  18,  19.  *  2  Cor.  v.  21. 


94  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [il. 

or  inclination  to  sympathise  with  it  and  appreciate  it. 
Yet,  even  thus,  in  Paul's  view,  the  sacrifice  reconciled 
us  to  God,  to  the  eternal  order ;  for  it  contained  the 
means,  the  only  possible  means,  of  our  being  brought 
into  harmony  with  this  order.  Jesus  Christ,  never- 
theless, was  delivered  for  our  sins  while  we  were  yet 
sinners,1  and  before  we  could  yet  appreciate  what  he 
did.  But  presently  there  comes  a  change.  Grace, 
the  goodness  of  God,  the  spirit, — as  Paul  loved  to  call 
that  awful  and  beneficent  impulsion  of  things  within 
us  and  without  us,  which  we  can  concur  with,  indeed, 
but  cannot  create, — leads  us  to  repentance  toivards  God,2 
a  change  of  the  inner  man  in  regard  to  the  moral 
order,  duty,  righteousness.  And  now,  to  help  our 
impulse  towards  righteousness,  we  have  a  power  en- 
abling us  to  turn  this  impulse  to  full  account.  Now 
the  spirit  does  its  greatest  work  in  us ;  now,  for  the 
first  time,  the  influence  of  Jesus  Christ's  pregnant  act 
really  gains  us.  For  now  awakens  the  sympathy  for 
the  act  and  the  appreciation  of  it,  which  its  doer  dis- 
pensed with  or  was  too  benign  to  wait  for ;  faith  work- 
ing through  love  towards  Christ 3  enters  into  us,  masters 
us.  We  identify  ourselves, — this  is  the  line  of  Paul's 
thought, — with  Christ ;  we  repeat,  through  the  power 
of  this  identification,  Christ's  death  to  the  law  of  the 
flesh  and  self-pleasing,  his  condemnation  of  sin  in  the 
flesh ;  the  death  how  imperfectly,  the  condemnation 
how  remorsefully  !  But  we  rise  with  him,  Paul  con- 
tinues, to  life,  the  only  true  life,  of  imitation  of  God, 
of  putting  on  the  new  man  which  after  God  is  created 

1  Rom.  v.  8.  2  Acts  xx.  21.  3  Gal.  v.  6. 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  95 

in  righteousness  and  true  holiness,1  of  following  the 
eternal  law  of  the  moral  order  which  by  ourselves  we 
could  not  follow.  Then  God  justifies  us.  We  have 
the  righteousness  of  God  and  the  sense  of  having  it ; 
we  are  freed  from  the  oppressing  sense  of  eternal  order 
guiltily  outraged  and  sternly  retributive ;  we  act  in 
joyful  conformity  with  God's  will,  instead  of  in  miser- 
able rebellion  to  it;  we  are  in  harmony  with  the 
universal  order,  and  feel  that  we  are  in  harmony  with 
it.  If,  then,  Christ  was  delivered  for  our  sins,  he  was 
raised  for  our  justification.  If  by  Christ's  death,  says 
Paul,  we  were  reconciled  to  God,  by  the  means  being 
thus  provided  for  our  else  impossible  access  to  God, 
much  more,  when  we  have  availed  ourselves  of  these 
means  and  died  with  him,  are  we  saved  by  his  life 
which  \ve  partake.2  Henceforward  we  are  not  only 
justified  but  sanctified;  not  only  in  harmony  with  the 
eternal  order  and  at  peace  with  God,  but  consecrated3 
and  unalterably  devoted  to  them;  and  from  this  devo- 
tion comes  an  ever-growing  union  with  God  in  Christ, 
an  advance,  as  St.  Paul  says,  from  glory  to  glory.4 

This  is  Paul's  conception  of  Christ's  sacrifice.  His 
figures  of  ransom,  redemption,  propitiation,  blood, 
offering,  all  subordinate  themselves  to  his  central  idea 
of  identification  with  Christ  through  dying  with  him,  and 
are  strictly  subservient  to  it.  The  figured  speech  of 
Paul  has  its  own  beauty  and  propriety.     His  language 

1  Epli.  iv.  24.  2  Kom.  v.  10. 

3  The  endless  words  which  Puritanism  has  wasted  upon  sanc- 
tification,  a  magical  filling  with  goodness  and  holiness,  flow  from 
a  mere  mistake  in  translating  ;  ayia<r/j.6s  means  consecration,  a 
setting  apart  to  holy  service.  4  2  Cor.  iii.  18. 


96  ST.  PAUL  AND  PKOTESTANTISM.  [n. 

is,  much  of  it,  Eastern  language,  imaginative  language; 
there  is  no  need  for  turning  it,  as  Puritanism  has  done, 
into  the  methodical  language  of  the  schools.  But  if 
it  is  to  be  turned  into  methodical  language,  then  it  is 
the  language  into  which  we  have  translated  it  that 
translates  it  truly. 

"We  have  before  seen  how  it  fares  with  one  of  the 
two  great  tenets  which  Puritanism  has  extracted 
from  St.  Paul,  the  tenet  of  predestination.  "We  now 
see  how  it  fares  with  the  other,  the  tenet  of  justifica- 
tion. Paul's  figures  our  Puritans  have  taken  literally, 
while  for  his  central  idea  they  have  substituted 
another  which  is  not  his.  And  his  central  idea  they 
have  turned  into  a  figure,  and  have  let  it  almost  dis- 
appear out  of  their  mind.  His  essential  idea  lost, 
his  figures  misused,  an  idea  essentially  not  his  sub- 
stituted for  his, — the  unedifying  patchwork  thus 
made,  Puritanism  has  stamped  with  Paul's  name,  and 
called  the  gospel.  It  thunders  at  Eomanism  for  not 
preaching  it,  it  casts  off  Anglicanism  for  not  setting  it 
forth  alone  and  unreservedly,  it  founds  organisations 
of  its  own  to  give  full  effect  to  it ;  these  organisations 
guide  politics,  govern  statesmen,  destroy  institutions: 
— and  they  are  based  upon  a  blunder  ! 

It  is  to  Protestantism,  and  this  its  Puritan  gospel, 
that  the  reproaches  thrown  on  St.  Paul,  for  sophisti- 
cating religion  of  the  heart  into  theories  of  the  head 
about  election  and  justification,  rightly  attach.  St. 
Paul  himself,  as  we  have  seen,  begins  with  seeking 
righteousness  and  ends  with  finding  it  j  from  first  to 
last,  the  practical  religious  sense  never  deserts  him. 


n.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  97 

If  he  could  have  seen  and  heard  our  preachers  of 
predestination  and  justification,  they  are  just  the 
people  he  would  have  called  "  diseased  about  ques- 
tions and  word-battlings."1  He  would  have  told 
Puritanism  that  every  Sunday,  when  in  all  its 
countless  chapels  it  reads  him  and  preaches  from 
him,  the  veil  is  upon  its  heart.  The  moment  it 
reads  him  right,  a  veil  will  seem  to  be  taken  away 
from  its  heart ; 2  it  will  feel  as  though  scales  were 
fallen  from  its  eyes. 

And  now,  leaving  Puritanism  and  its  errors,  let 
us  turn  again  for  a  moment,  before  we  end,  to  the 
glorious  apostle  who  has  occupied  us  so  long.  He 
died,  and  men's  familiar  fancies  of  bargain  and 
appeasement,  from  which,  by  a  prodigy  of  religious 
insight,  Paul  had  been  able  to  disengage  the  death 
of  Jesus,  fastened  on  it  and  made  it  their  own.  Back 
rolled  over  the  human  soul  the  mist  which  the  fires 
of  Paul's  spiritual  genius  had  dispersed  for  a  few 
short  years.  The  mind  of  the  whole  world  was 
imbrued  in  the  idea  of  blood,  and  only  through  the 
false  idea  of  sacrifice  did  men  reach  Paul's  true  one. 
Paul's  idea  of  dying  with  Christ  the  Imitation  elevates 
more  conspicuously  than  any  Protestant  treatise 
elevates  it ;  but  it  elevates  it  environed  and  domi- 
nated by  the  idea  of  appeasement ; — of  the  magnified 
and  non- natural  man  in  Heaven,  wrath -filled  and 
blood -exacting;  of  the  human  victim  adding  his 
piacular  sufferings  to  those  of  the  divine.     Mean  while 

1  1  Tim.  \i.  4.  2  2  Cor.  iii.  15,  16. 

VOL.  VII.  H 


98  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  [il. 

another  clanger  was  preparing.  Gifted  men  had 
brought  to  the  study  of  St.  Paul  the  habits  of  the 
Greek  and  Roman  schools,  and  philosophised  where 
Paul  Orientalised.  Augustine,  a  great  genius,  who 
can  doubt  it  1 — nay,  a  great  religious  genius,  but 
unlike  Paul  in  this,  and  inferior  to  him,  that  he  con- 
fused the  boundaries  of  metaphysics  and  religion, 
which  Paul  never  did, — Augustine  set  the  example 
of  finding  in  Paul's  eastern  speech,  just  as  it  stood, 
the  formal  propositions  of  western  dialectics.  Last 
came  the  interpreter  in  whose  slowly  relaxing  grasp 
we  still  lie, — the  heavy-handed  Protestant  Philistine. 
Sincere,  gross  of  perception,  prosaic,  he  saw  in 
Paul's  mystical  idea  of  man's  investiture  with  the 
righteousness  of  God  nothing  but  a  strict  legal  trans- 
action, and  reserved  all  his  imagination  for  Hell  and 
the  New  Jerusalem  and  his  foretaste  of  them.  A 
so-called  Pauline  doctrine  was  in  all  men's  mouths, 
but  the  ideas  of  the  true  Paul  lay  lost  and  buried. 

Every  one  who  has  been  at  Rome  has  been  taken 
to  see  the  Church  of  St.  Paul,  rebuilt  after  a  destruc- 
tion by  fire  forty  years  ago.  The  church  stands  a 
mile  or  two  out  of  the  city,  on  the  way  to  Ostia  and 
the  desert.  The  interior  has  all  the  costly  magnifi- 
cence of  Italian,  churches  ;  on  the  ceiling  is  written  in 
gilded  letters  :  "  Doctor  Gentium."  Gold  glitters  and 
marbles  gleam,  but  man  and  his  movement  are  not 
there.  The  traveller  has  left  at  a  distance  the  fumum 
et  opes  strepitumque  Bomce  ;  around  him  reigns  solitude. 
There  is  Paul,  with  the  mystery  which  was  hidden 
from  ages  and  from  generations,  which  was  uncovered 


II.]  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM.  99 

by  him  for  some  half  score  years,  and  which  then  was 
buried  with  him  in  his  grave  !  Not  in  our  day  will 
he  relive,  with  his  incessant  effort  to  find  a  moral 
side  for  miracle,  with  his  incessant  effort  to  make  the 
intellect  follow  and  secure  all  the  workings  of  the 
religious  perception.  Of  those  who  care  for  religion, 
the  multitude  of  -us  want  the  materialism  of  the 
Apocalypse ;  the  few  want  a  vague  religiosity. 
^Sdfijaee;- which  more  and  more  teaches  us  to  find 
in  the  unapparent  the  real,  will  gradually  serve  to 
conquer  the  materialism  of  popular  religion.  The 
friends  of  vague  religiosity,  on  the  other  hand,  will 
be  more  and  more  taught  by  experience  that  a 
theology,  a  scientific  appreciation  of  the  facts  of 
religion,  is  wanted  for  religion  ;  but  a  theology  which 
is  a  true  theology,  not  a  false.  Both  these  influences 
will  work  for  Paul's  re-emergence.  The  doctrine  of 
Paul  will  arise  out  of  the  tomb  where  for  centuries 
it  has  lain  buried.  It  will  edify  the  church  of  the 
future ;  it  will  have  the  consent  of  happier  genera- 
tions, the  applause  of  less  superstitious  ages.  All 
will  be  too  little  to  pay  half  the  debt  which  the 
church  of  God  owes  to  this  "  least  of  the  apostles, 
who  was  not  fit  to  be  called  an  apostle,  because  he 
persecuted  the  church  of  God." * 

1  l  Cor.  xv.  9. 


PURITANISM 


AND   THE 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND. 

In  the  foregoing  treatise  we  have  spoken  of  Protest- 
antism, and  have  tried  to  show,  how,  with  its  three 
notable  tenets  of  predestination,  original  sin,  and 
justification,  it  has  been  pounding  away  for  three 
centuries  at  St.  Paul's  wrong  words,  and  missing  his 
essential  doctrine.  And  we  took  Puritanism  to  stand 
for  Protestantism,  and  addressed  ourselves  directly 
to  the  Puritans ;  for  the  Puritan  Churches,  we  said, 
seem  to  exist  specially  for  the  sake  of  these  doctrines, 
one  or  more  of  them.  It  is  true,  many  Puritans  now 
profess  also  the  doctrine  that  it  is  wicked  to  have  a 
church  connected  with  the  State  ;  but  this  is  a  later 
invention,1  designed  to  strengthen  a  separation  pre- 
viously  made.     It   requires   to    be   noticed   in   due 

1  In  liis  very  interesting  history,  The  CJmrch  of  the  Restora- 
tion, Dr.  Stoughton  says  most  truly  of  both  Anglicans  and 
Puritans  in  1660  :  "  It  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  this  cir- 
cumstance, that  both  parties  ivere  advocates  for  a  national 
establishment  of  religion."    Vol.  i.  p.  113. 


102  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

course  ;  but  meanwhile,  we  say  that  the  aim  of  setting 
forth  certain  Protestant  doctrines  purely  and  integrally 
is  the,  main  title  on  which  Puritan  Churches  rest 
their  right  of  existing.  With  historic  Churches,  like 
those  of  England  or  Eome,  it  is  otherwise ;  these 
doctrines  may  be  in  them,  may  be  a  part  of  their 
traditions,  their  theological  stock ;  but  certainly  no 
one  will  say  that  either  of  these  Churches  was  made 
for  the  express  purpose  of  upholding  these  three 
theological  doctrines,  jointly  or  severally.  A  little 
consideration  will  show  quite  clearly  the  difference  in 
this  respect  between  the  historic  Churches  and  the 
churches  of  separatists. 

People  are  not  necessarily  monarchists  or  republi- 
cans because  they  are  born  and  live  under  a  monarchy 
or  republic.  They  avail  themselves  of  the  established 
government  for  those  general  purposes  for  which 
governments  and  politics  exist,  but  they  do  not,  for 
the  most  part,  trouble  their  heads  much  about  parti- 
cular theoretical  principles  of  government.  Nay,  it 
may  well  happen  that  a  man  who  lives  and  thrives 
under  a  monarchy  shall  yet  theoretically  disapprove 
the  principle  of  monarchy,  or  a  man  who  lives  and 
thrives  under  a  republic,  the  principle  of  republican- 
ism. But  a  man,  or  body  of  men,  who  have  gone 
out  of  an  established  polity  from  zeal  for  the  principle 
of  monarchy  or  republicanism,  and  have  set  up  a 
polity  of  their  own  for  the  very  purpose  of  giving 
satisfaction  to  this  zeal,  are  in  a  false  position  when- 
ever it  shall  appear  that  the  principle,  from  zeal  for 
which  they  have  constituted  their  separate  existence, 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  103 

is  unsound.  So  predestinarianism  and  solifidianism, 
Calvinism  and  Lutherism,  may  appear  in  the  theology 
of  a  national  or  historic  Church,  charged  ever  since 
the  rise  of  Christianity  with  the  task  of  developing 
the  immense  and  complex  store  of  ideas  contained  in 
Christianity  ;  and  when  the  stage  of  development  has 
been  reached  at  which  the  unsoundness  of  predesti- 
narian  and  solifidian  dogmas  becomes  manifest,  they 
will  be  dropped  out  of  the  Church's  theology,  and  she 
and  her  task  will  remain  what  they  were  before.  But 
when  people  from  zeal  for  these  dogmas  find  their 
historic  Church  not  predestinarian  or  solifidian  enough 
for  them,  and  make  new  associations  of  their  own, 
which  shall  be  predestinarian  or  solifidian  absolutely, 
then,  when  the  dogmas  are  undermined,  the  associa- 
tions are  undermined  too,  and  have  either  to  own 
themselves  without  a  reason  for  existing,  or  to  dis- 
cover some  new  reason  in  place  of  the  old.  Now, 
nothing  which  exists  likes  to  be  driven  to  a  strait  of 
this  kind ;  so  every  association  which  exists  because 
of  zeal  for  the  dogmas  of  election  or  justification,  will 
naturally  cling  to  these  dogmas  longer  and  harder 
than  other  people.  Therefore  we  have  treated  the 
Puritan  bodies  in  this  country  as  the  great  stronghold 
here  of  these  doctrines ;  and  in  showing  what  a  per- 
version of  Paul's  real  ideas  these  doctrines  commonly 
called  Pauline  are,  we  have  addressed  ourselves  to  the 
Puritans. 

But  those  who  speak  in  the  Puritans'  name  say 
that  we  charge  upon  Puritanism,  as  a  sectarian  pecu- 
liarity, doctrine  which  is  not  only  the  inevitable  result 


* 


104  PUEITANISM  AND  THE 

of  an  honest  interpretation  of  the  writings  of  St.  Paul, 
but  which  is,  besides,  the  creed  held  in  common  by 
Puritans  and  by  all  the  churches  in  Christendom, 
with  one  insignificant  exception.  Nay,  they  even 
declare  that  "  no  man  in  his  senses  can  deny  that  the 
Church  of  England  was  meant  to  be  a  thoroughly 
Protestant  and  Evangelical,  and  it  may  be  said  Cal- 
vinistic  Church."  To  saddle  Puritanism  in  special 
with  the  doctrines  we  have  called  Puritan  is,  they 
say,  a  piece  of  unfairness  which  has  its  motive  in 
mere  ill-will  to  Puritanism,  a  device  which  can  injure 
nobody  but  its  author. 

Now,  we  have  tried  to  show  that  the  Puritans  are 
quite  wrong  in  imagining  their  doctrine  to  be  the 
inevitable  result  of  an  honest  interpretation  of  St. 
Paul's  writings.  That  they  are  wrong  we  think  is 
certain ;  but  so  far  are  we  from  being  moved,  in 
anything  that  we  do  or  say  in  this  matter,  by  ill-will 
to  Puritanism  and  the  Puritans,  that  it  is,  on  the 
contrary,  just  because  of  our  hearty  respect  for  them, 
and  from  our  strong  sense  of  their  value,  that  we 
speak  as  we  do.  Certainly  we  consider  them  to  be 
in  the  main,  at  present,  an  obstacle  to  progress  and 
to  true  civilisation.  But  this  is  because  their  worth 
is,  in  our  opinion,  such  that  not  only  must  one  for 
their  own  sakes  wish  to  see  it  turned  to  more  advan- 
tage, but  others,  from  whom  they  are  now  separated, 
would  greatly  gain  by  conjunction  with  them,  and 
our  whole  collective  force  of  growth  and  progress  be 
thereby  immeasurably  increased.  In  short,  our  one 
feeling  when  we  regard  them,  is  a  feeling,  not  of  ill- 


CHUECH  OF  ENGLAND.  105 

will,  but  of  regret  at  waste  of  power  ;  our  one  desire 
is  a  desire  of  comprehension. 

But  the  waste  of  power  must  continue,  and  the 
comprehension  is  impossible,  so  long  as  Puritanism 
imagines  itself  to  possess,  in  its  two  or  three  signal 
doctrines,  what  it  calls  the  gospel ;  so  long  as  it  con- 
stitutes itself  separately  on  the  plea  of  setting  forth 
purely  the  gospel,  which  it  thus  imagines  itself  to  have 
seized ;  so  long  as  it  judges  others  as  not  holding  the 
gospel,  or  as  holding  additions  to  it  and  variations 
from  it.  This  fatal  self-righteousness,  grounded  on  a 
false  conceit  of  knowledge,  makes  comprehension 
impossible ;  because  it  takes  for  granted  the  posses- 
sion of  the  truth,  and  the  power  of  deciding  how 
others  violate  it ;  and  this  is  a  position  of  superiority, 
and  suits  conquest  rather  than  comprehension. 

The  good  of  comprehension  in  a  national  Church 
is,  that  the  larger  and  more  various  the  body  of 
members,  the  more  elements  of  power  and  life  the 
Church  will  contain,  the  more  points  will  there  be  of 
contact,  the  more  mutual  support  and  stimulus,  the 
more  growth  in  perfection  both  of  thought  and  prac- 
tice. The  waste  of  power  from  not  comprehending 
the  Puritans  in  the  national  Church  is  measured  by 
the  number  and  value  of  elements  which  Puritanism 
could  supply  towards  the  collective  growth  of  the 
whole  body.  The  national  Church  would  grow  more 
vigorously  towards  a  higher  stage  of  insight  into 
religious  truth,  and  consequently  towards  a  greater 
perfection  of  practice,  if  it  had  these  elements ;  and 
this  is  why  we  wish  for  the  Puritans  in  the  Church. 


106  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

But,  meanwhile,  Puritanism  will  not  contribute  to 
the  common  growth,  mainly  because  it  believes  that 
a  certain  set  of  opinions  or  scheme  of  theological 
doctrine  is  the  gospel ;  that  it  is  possible  and  profitable 
to  extract  this,  and  that  Puritans  have  done  so ;  and 
that  it  is  the  duty  of  men,  who  like  themselves  have 
extracted  it,  to  separate  themselves  from  those  who 
have  not,  and  to  set  themselves  apart  that  they  may 
profess  it  purely. 

To  disabuse  them  of  this  error,  which,  by  prevent- 
ing collective  life,  prevents  also  collective  growth,  it 
is  necessary  to  show  them  that  their  extracted  scheme 
of  theological  doctrine  is  not  really  the  gospel;  and 
that  at  any  rate,  therefore,  it  is  not  worth  their  while 
to  separate  themselves,  and  to  frustrate  the  hope  of 
growth  in  common,  merely  for  this  scheme's  sake. 
And  even  if  it  were  true,  as  they  allege,  that  the 
national  and  historic  Churches  of  Christendom  do 
equally  with  Puritanism  hold  this  scheme,  or  main 
parts  of  it,  still  it  would  be  to  Puritanism,  and  not  to 
the  historic  Churches,  that  in  showing  the  invalidity 
and  unscripturalness  of  this  scheme  we  should  address 
ourselves,  because  the  Puritan  Churches  found  their 
very  existence  on  it,  and  the  historic  Churches  do 
not.  And  not  founding  their  existence  on  it,  nor 
falling  into  separatism  for  it,  the  historic  Churches 
have  a  collective  life  which  is  very  considerable,  and 
a  power  of  growth,  even  in  respect  of  the  very  scheme 
of  doctrine  in  question,  supposing  them  to  hold  it, 
far  greater  than  any  which  the  Puritan  Churches 
show,   but  which  would  be   yet  greater   and   more 


CHUKCH  OF  ENGLAND.  107 

fruitful  still,  if  the  historic  Churches  combined  the 
large  and  admirable  contingent  of  Puritanism  with 
their  own  forces.  Therefore,  as  we  have  said,  it  is 
out  of  no  sort  of  malice  or  ill-will,  but  from  esteem 
for  their  fine  qualities  and  from  desire  for  their  help, 
that  we  have  addressed  ourselves  to  the  Puritans. 
We  propose  to  complete  now  our  dealings  with  this 
subject  by  showing  how,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
Church  of  England  (which  is  the  historic  Church 
practically  in  question  so  far  as  Puritanism  is  con- 
cerned) seems  to  us  to  have  displayed  with  respect  to 
those  very  tenets  which  we  have  criticised,  and  for 
which  we  are  said  to  have  unfairly  made  Puritanism 
alone  responsible,  a  continual  power  of  growth  which 
has  been  wanting  to  the  Puritan  congregations.  This 
we  propose  to  show  first ;  and  we  will  show  secondly, 
how,  from  the  very  theory  of  a  historic  or  national 
Church,  the  probability  of  this  greater  power  of 
growth  seems  to  follow,  that  we  may  try  and  commend 
that  theory  a  little  more  to  the  thoughts  and  favour 
of  our  Puritan  friends. 

The  two  great  Puritan  doctrines  which  we  have 
criticised  at  such  length  are  the  doctrines  of  predes- 
tination and  justification.  Of  the  aggressive  and 
militant  Puritanism  of  our  people,  predestination  has, 
almost  up  to  the  present  day,  been  the  favourite  and 
distinguishing  doctrine ;  it  was  the  doctrine  which 
Puritan  flocks  greedily  sought,  which  Puritan  ministers 
powerfully  preached,  and  called  others  carnal  gospellers 
for  not  preaching.  This  Geneva  doctrine  accompanied 
the  Geneva  discipline.     Puritanism's  first  great  wish 


108  PUEITANISM  AND  THE 

and  endeavour  was  to  establish  both  the  one  and  the 
other  absolutely  in  the  Church  of  England,  and  it 
became  nonconforming  because  it  failed.  Now,  it  is 
well  known  that  the  High  Church  divines  of  the 
seventeenth  century  were  Arminian,  that  the  Church 
of  England  was  the  stronghold  of  Arminianism,  and 
that  Arminianism  is,  as  we  have  said,  an  effort  of 
man's  practical  good  sense  to  get  rid  of  what  is  shock- 
ing to  it  in  Calvinism.  But  what  is  not  so  well 
known,  and  what  is  eminently  worthy  of  remark,  is 
the  constant  pressure  applied  by  Puritanism  upon  the 
Church  of  England,  to  put  the  Calvinistic  doctrine 
more  distinctly  into  her  formularies,  and  to  tie  her 
up  more  strictly  to  this  doctrine ;  the  constant  resist- 
ance offered  by  the  Church  of  England,  and  the  large 
degree  in  which  Nonconformity  is  really  due  to  this 

Everybody  knows  how  far  Nonconformity  is  due 
to  the  Church  of  England's  rigour  in  imposing  an 
explicit  declaration  of  adherence  to  her  formularies. 
But  only  a  few,  who  have  searched  out  the  matter, 
know  how  far  Nonconformity  is  due,  also,  to  the 
Church  of  England's  invincible  reluctance  to  narrow 
her  large  and  loose  formularies  to  the  strict  Calvinistic 
sense  dear  to  Puritanism.  Yet  this  is  what  the  record 
of  conferences  shows  at  least  as  signally  as  it  shows 
the  domineering  spirit  of  the  High  Church  clergy ; 
but  our  current  political  histories,  written  always 
with  an  anti- ecclesiastical  bias,  which  is  natural 
enough,  inasmuch  as  the  Church  party  was  not  the 
party  of  civil  liberty,  leaves  this  singularly  out  of 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  109 

sight.  Yet  there  is  a  very  catena  of  testimonies  to 
prove  it ;  to  show  us,  from  Elizabeth's  reign  to  Charles 
the  Second's,  Calvinism,  as  a  power  both  within  and 
without  the  Church  of  England,  trying  to  get  decisive 
command  of  her  formularies ;  and  the  Church  of 
England,  with  the  instinct  of  a  body  meant  to  live 
and  grow,  and  averse  to  fetter  and  engage  its  future, 
steadily  resisting. 

The  Lambeth  Articles  of  1595  exhibit  Calvinism 
potent  in  the  Church  of  England  herself,  and  among 
the  bishops  of  the  Church.  True ;  but  could  it 
establish  itself  there  ?  No ;  the  Lambeth  Articles 
were  recalled  and  suppressed,  and  Archbishop  Whit- 
gift  was  threatened  with  the  penalties  of  a  prcemunire 
for  having  published  them.  Again,  it  was  usual  from 
1552  onwards  to  print  in  the  English  Bibles  a  cate- 
chism asserting  the  Calvinistic  doctrine  of  absolute 
election  and  reprobation.  In  the  first  Bibles  of  the 
authorised  version  this  catechism  appeared ;  but  it 
was  removed  in  1615.  Yet  the  Puritans  had  met 
James  the  First,  at  his  accession  in  1603,  with  the 
petition  that  there  may  be  an  uniformity  of  doctrine  pre- 
scribed; meaning  an  uniformity  in  this  sense  of  strict 
Calvinism.  Thus  from  the  very  commencement  the 
Church,  as  regards  doctrine,  was  for  opening;  Puri- 
tanism was  for  narrowing. 

Then  came,  in  1604,  the  Hampton  Court  Confer- 
ence. Here,  as  usual,  political  historians  reproach 
the  Church  with  havins;  conceded  so  little.  These 
historians,  as  we  have  said,  think  solely  of  the 
Puritans  as  the  religious  party  favourable  to   civil 


110  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

liberty,  and  on  that  account  desire  the  preponderance 
of  Puritanism  in  its  disputes  with  the  Church.  But, 
as  regards  freedom  of  thought  and  truth  of  ideas, 
what  was  it  that  the  Church  was  pressed  by  Puri- 
tanism to  concede,  and  what  was  the  character  and 
tendency  of  the  Church's  refusal  ?  The  first  Puritan 
petition  at  this  Conference  was  "  that  the  doctrine  of 
the  Church  might  be  preserved  in  purity  according  to 
God's  Word."  That  is,  according  to  the  Calvinistic 
interpretation  put  upon  God's  Word  by  Calvin  and 
the  Puritans  after  him ;  an  interpretation  which  we 
have  shown  to  be  erroneous  and  unscriptural.  This 
Calvinistic  doctrine  of  predestination  the  Puritans 
wanted  to  plant  hard  and  fast  in  the  Church's  formu- 
laries, and  the  Church  resisted.  The  Puritan  foreman 
complained  of  the  loose  wording  of  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles  because  it  allowed  an  escape  from  the  strict 
doctrine  of  Calvinism,  and  moved  that  the  Lambeth 
Articles,  strictly  Calvinistic,  might  be  inserted  into  the 
Book  of  Articles.  The  Bishops  resisted,  and  here 
are  the  words  of  their  spokesman,  the  Bishop  of 
London.  "The  Bishop  of  London  answered,  that 
too  many  in  those  days,  neglecting  holiness  of  life, 
laid  all  their  religion  upon  predestination, — 'If  I  shall 
be  saved,  I  shall  be  saved,'  which  he  termed  a  des- 
perate doctrine,  showing  it  to  be  contrary  to  good 
divinity,  which  teaches  us  to  reason  rather  ascendendo 
than  descendendo,  thus  :  '  I  live  in  obedience  to  God, 
in  love  with  my  neighbour,  I  follow  my  vocation, 
etc.,  therefore  I  trust  that  God  hath  elected  me 
and  predestinated  me  to  salvation ; '  not  thus,  which 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  Ill 

is  the  usual  course  of  argument :  '  God  hath  pre- 
destinated and  chosen  me  to  life,  therefore,  though  I 
sin  never  so  grievously,  I  shall  not  be  damned,  for 
whom  he  once  loveth  he  loveth  to  the  end.'  Who 
will  deny  that  this  resistance  of  the  Church  to  the 
Puritans,  who,  laying  all  their  religion  upon  predestina- 
tion, wanted  to  make  the  Church  do  the  same,  was 
as  favourable  to  growth  of  thought  and  to  sound 
philosophy,  as  it  was  consonant  to  good  sense  1 

We  have  already,  in  the  foregoing  treatise,  quoted 
from  the  complaints  against  the  Church  by  the  Com- 
mittee of  Divines  appointed  by  the  House  of  Lords 
in  1641,  when  Puritanism  was  strongly  in  the 
ascendant.  Some  in  the  Church  teach,  say  the 
Puritan  complainers,  "  that  good  works  are  concauses 
with  faith  in  the  act  of  justification ;  some  have 
oppugned  the  certitude  of  salvation ;  some  have 
maintained  that  the  Lord's  day  is  kept  merely  by 
ecclesiastical  constitution ;  some  have  defended  the 
whole  gross  substance  of  Arminianism,  that  the  act 
of  conversion  depends  upon  the  concurrence  of  men's 
free  will ;  some  have  denied  original  sin  ;  some  have 
broached  out  of  Socinus  a  most  uncomfortable  and 
desperate  doctrine,  that  late  repentance,  that  is,  upon 
the  last  bed  of  sickness, — is  unfruitful,  at  least,  to 
reconcile  the  penitent  to  God."  What  we  insist  upon 
is,  that  the  growth  and  movement  of  thought,  on 
religious  matters,  are  here  shown  to  be  in  the  Church ; 
and  that  on  these  two  cardinal  doctrines  of  predes- 
tination and  justification,  with  which  we  are  accused 
of  unfairly  saddling  Puritanism  alone,  Puritanism  did 


112  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

really  want  to  make  the  national  religion  hinge, 
while  the  Church  did  not,  but  resisted. 

The  resistance  of  the  Church  was  at  that  time 
vanquished,  not  by  importing  strict  Calvinism  into 
the  Prayer  Book,  but  by  casting  out  the  Prayer 
Book  altogether.  By  ordinance  in  1645,  the  use  of 
the  Prayer  Book,  which  for  churches  had  already 
been  forbidden,  was  forbidden  also  for  all  private 
places  and  families  ;  all  copies  to  be  found  in  churches 
were  to  be  delivered  up,  and  heavy  penalties  were 
imposed  on  persons  retaining  them. 

We  come  to  the  occasion  where  the  Church  is 
thought  to  have  most  decisively  shown  her  unyield- 
ingness,— the  Savoy  Conference  in  1661,  after  King 
Charles  the  Second's  restoration.  The  question  was 
what  alterations  were  to  be  made  in  the  Prayer  Book, 
so  as  to  enable  the  Puritans  to  use  it  as  well  as  the 
Church  party.  Having  in  view  doctrine  and  free 
development  of  thought,  we  say  again  it  was  the 
Puritans  who  were  for  narrowing,  it  was  the 
Churchmen  who  were  for  keeping  open.  Their 
heads  full  of  these  tenets  of  predestination,  origi- 
nal sin,  and  justification,  which  we  are  accused  of 
charging  upon  them  exclusively  and  unfairly,  the 
Puritans  complain  that  the  Church  Liturgy  seems 
very  defective, — why*?  Because  "the  systems  of 
doctrine  of  a  church  should  summarily  comprehend 
all  such  doctrines  as  are  necessary  to  be  believed,"  and 
the  liturgy  does  not  set  down  these  explicitly  enough. 
For  instance,  "the  Confession,"  they  say,  "is  very 
defective,   not  clearly  expressing  original  sin.     The 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  113 

Catechism  is  defective  as  to  many  necessary  doctrines 
of  our  religion,  some  even  of  the  essentials  of  Chris- 
tianity not  being  mentioned  except  in  the  Creed,  and 
there  not  so  explicit  as  ought  to  be  in  a  catechism." 
And  what  is  the  answer  of  the  bishops  1  It  is  the 
answer  of  people  with  an  instinct  that  this  definition 
and  explicitness  demanded  by  the  Puritans  are 
incompatible  with  the  conditions  of  life  of  a  historic 
church.  "The  church,"  they  say,  "  hath  been  careful 
to  put  nothing  into  the  Liturgy  but  that  which  is 
either  evidently  the  Word  of  God,  or  what  hath 
been  generally  received  in  the  Catholic  Church." 
The  Catechism  is  not  intended  as  a  whole  body  of 
divinity.  The  Puritans  had  requested  that  "the 
Church  prayers  might  contain  nothing  questioned  by 
pious,  learned,  and  orthodox  persons."  Seizing  on  this 
expression,  wherein  is  contained  the  ground  of  that 
separatism  for  opinions  which  we  hold  to  be  so  fatal 
not  only  to  Church  life  but  also  to  the  natural  growth 
of  religious  thought,  the  bishops  ask,  and  in  the  very 
language  of  good  sense  :  "  Who  are  pious,  learned,  and 
orthodox  persons?  Are  we  to  take  for  such  all  who 
shall  confidently  affirm  themselves  to  be  such  ?  If  by 
orthodox  be  meant  those  who  adhere  to  Scripture  and 
the  Catholic  consent  of  antiquity,  we  do  not  yet  know 
that  any  part  of  our  Liturgy  has  been  questioned  by 
such.  It  was  the  wisdom  of  our  reformers  to  draw 
up  such  a  liturgy  as  neither  Romanist  nor  Protestant  could 
justly  except  against.  Persons  want  the  book  to  be 
altered  for  their  own  satisfaction." 

This  allegation    respecting  the  character   of   the 
VOL.  VII.  I 


1 1  4  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

Liturgy  is  undoubtedly  true,  for  the  Puritans  them- 
selves expressly  admitted  its  truth,  and  urged  this  as 
a  reason  for  altering  the  Liturgy.  It  is  in  con- 
sonance with  what  is  so  often  said,  and  truly  said,  of 
the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  that  they  are  articles  of  'peace. 
This,  indeed,  makes  the  Articles  scientifically  worth- 
less. Metaphysical  propositions,  such  as  they  in  the 
main  are,  drawn  up  with  a  studied  design  for  their 
being  vague  and  loose,  can  have  no  metaphysical 
value.  But  no  one  then  thought  of  doing  without 
metaphysical  articles ;  so  to  make  them  articles  of 
peace  showed  a  true  conception  of  the  conditions  of 
life  and  growth  in  a  church.  The  readiness  to  put  a 
lax  sense  on  subscription  is  a  proof  of  the  same  dis- 
position of  mind.  Chillingworth's  judgment  about 
the  meaning  of  subscription  is  well  known.  "  For 
the  Church  of  England,  I  am  persuaded  that  the 
constant  doctrine  of  it  is  so  pure  and  orthodox, 
that  whosoever  believes  it  and  lives  according  to 
it,  undoubtedly  he  shall  be  saved ;  and  that  there  is 
no  error  in  it  which  may  necessitate  or  warrant  any 
man  to  disturb  the  peace  or  renounce  the  communion 
of  it.  This,  in  my  opinion,  is  all  that  is  intended  by  subscrip- 
tion." And  Laud,  a  very  different  man  from  Chilling- 
worth,  held  on  this  point  a  like  opinion  with  him. 

Certainly  the  Church  of  England  was  in  no  humour, 
at  the  time  of  the  Savoy  Conference,  to  deal  tenderly 
with  the  Puritans.  It  was  too  much  disposed  to  show 
to  the  Puritans  the  same  sort  of  tenderness  which  the 
Puritans  had  shown  to  the  Church.  The  nation,  more- 
over, was  nearly  as  ill-disposed  as  the  Church  to  the 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  115 

Puritans ;  and  this  proves  well  what  the  narrowness 
and  tyrannousness  of  Puritanism  domir.n.nt  had  really 
been.  But  the  Church  undoubtedly  said  and  did  to 
Puritanism  after  the  Restoration  much  that  was  harsh 
and  bitter,  and  therefore  inexcusable  in  a  Christian 
church.  Examples  of  Churchmen  so  speaking  and 
dealing  may  be  found  in  the  transactions  of  1661 ; 
but  perhaps  the  most  offensive  example  of  a  Church- 
man of  this  kind,  and  who  deserves  therefore  to  be 
studied,  is  a  certain  Dr.  Jane,  Regius  Professor  of 
Divinity  at  Oxford  and  Dean  of  Gloucester,  who  was 
put  forward  to  thwart  Tillotson's  projects  of  compre- 
hension in  1689.  A  certain  number  of  Dr.  Janes 
there  have  always  been  in  the  Church.  There  are  a 
certain  number  of  them  in  the  Church  now,  and  there 
always  will  be  a  certain  number  of  them.  No  Church 
could  exist  with  many  of  them  j  but  one  should  have 
a  sample  or  two  of  them  always  before  one's  mind, 
and  remember  how  to  the  excluded  party  a  few,  and 
those  the  worst,  of  their  excluders,  are  always  apt  to 
stand  for  the  whole,  in  order  to  comprehend  the  full 
bitterness  and  resentment  of  Puritanism  against  the 
Church  of  England.  Else  one  would  be  inclined  to 
say,  after  attentively  and  impartially  observing  the 
two  parties,  that  the  persistence  of  the  Church  in 
pressing  for  conformity  arose,  not  as  the  political 
historians  would  have  it,  from  the  lust  of  haughty 
ecclesiastics  for  dominion  and  for  imposing  their  law 
on  the  vanquished,  but  from  a  real  sense  that  their 
formularies  were  made  so  large  and  open,  and  the 
sense  put  upon  subscription  to  them  was  so  indulgent, 


116  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

that  any  reasonable  man  could  honestly  conform ; 
and  that  it  was  perverseness  and  determination  to 
impose  their  special  ideas  on  the  Church,  and  to 
narrow  the  Church's  latitude,  which  made  the  Puri- 
tans stand  out. 

Nay,  and  it  was  with  the  diction  of  the  Prayer 
Book,  as  it  was  with  its  doctrine ;  the  Church  took 
the  side  which  most  commands  the  sympathy  of 
liberal-minded  men.  Baxter  had  his  rival  Prayer 
Book  which  he  proposed  to  substitute  for  the  old 
one.  And  this  is  how  the  "Keformed  Liturgy"  was 
to  begin:  "Eternal,  incomprehensible  and  invisible 
God,  infinite  in  power,  wisdom  and  goodness,  dwell- 
ing in  the  light  which  no  man  can  approach,  where 
thousand  thousands  minister  unto  thee,  and  ten  thou- 
sand times  ten  thousand  stand  before  thee,"  etc. 
This,  I  say,  was  to  have  taken  the  place  of  our  old 
friend,  Dearly  beloved  brethren;  and  here,  again,  we 
can  hardly  refuse  approval  to  the  Church's  resistance 
to  Puritan  innovations.  We  could  wish,  indeed,  the 
Church  had  shown  the  same  largeness  in  consenting 
to  relax  ceremonies,  which  she  showed  in  refusing  to 
tighten  dogma,  or  to  spoil  diction.  Worse  still,  the 
angry  wish  to  drive  by  violence,  when  the  other 
party  will  not  move  by  reason,  finally  no  doubt 
appears ;  and  the  Church  has  much  to  blame  herself 
for  in  the  Act  of  Uniformity.  Blame  she  deserves, 
and  she  has  had  it  plentifully ;  but  what  has  not 
been  enough  perceived  is,  that  really  the  conviction 
of  her  own  moderation,  openness,  and  latitude,  as  far 
as  regards  doctrine,  seems  to  have  filled  her  mind 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  117 

during  her  dealings  with  the  Puritans ;  and  that  her 
impatience  with  them  was  in  great  measure  impatience 
at  seeing  these  so  ill-appreciated  by  them.  Very  ill- 
appreciated  by  them  they  certainly  were ;  and,  as  far 
as  doctrine  is  concerned,  the  quarrel  between  the 
Church  and  Puritanism  undoubtedly  was,  that  for 
the  doctrines  of  predestination,  original  sin,  and 
justification,  Puritanism  wanted  more  exclusive  pro- 
minence, more  dogmatic  definition,  more  bar  to  future 
escape  and  development ;  while  the  Church  resisted. 

And  as  the  instinct  of  the  Church  always  made 
her  avoid,  on  these  three  favourite  tenets  of  Puritan- 
ism, the  stringency  of  definition  which  Puritanism 
tried  to  force  upon  her,  always  made  her  leave  herself 
room  for  growth  in  regard  to  them, — so,  if  we  look 
for  the  positive  beginnings  and  first  signs  of  growth, 
of  disengagement  from  the  stock  notions  of  popular 
theology  about  predestination,  original  sin,  and  justi- 
fication, it  is  among  Churchmen,  and  not  among 
Puritans,  that  we  shall  find  them.  Few  will  deny 
that  as  to  the  doctrines  of  predestination  and  original 
sin,  at  any  rate,  the  mind  of  religious  men  is  no 
longer  what  it  was  in  the  seventeenth  century  or  in 
the  eighteenth.  There  has  been  evident  growth  and 
emancipation ;  Puritanism  itself  no  longer  holds  these 
doctrines  in  the  rigid  way  it  once  did.  To  whom  is 
this  change  owing  1  who  were  the  beginners  of  it  1 
They  were  men  using  that  comparative  openness  of 
mind  and  accessibility  to  ideas  which  was  fostered  by 
the  Church.  The  very  complaints  which  we  have 
quoted  from  the  Puritan  divines  prove  that  this  was 


118  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

so.  Henry  More,  saying  in  the  heat  of  the  Calvinistic 
controversy,  what  it  needed  insight  to  say  then,  but 
what  almost  every  one's  common  sense  says  now,  that 
"it  were  to  be  wished  the  Quinquarticular  points 
were  all  reduced  to  this  one,  namely,  That  none  shall 
be  saved  without  sincere  obedience;"  Jeremy  Taylor 
saying  in  the  teeth  of  the  superstitious  popular  doc- 
trine of  original  sin :  "  Original  sin,  as  it  is  at  this 
day  commonly  explicated,  was  not  the  doctrine  of  the 
primitive  church ;  but  when  Pelagius  had  puddled 
the  stream,  St.  Austin  was  so  angry  that  he  stamped 
and  puddled  it  more," — this  sort  of  utterance  from 
Churchmen  it  was,  that  first  introduced  into  our 
religious  world  the  current  of  more  independent 
thought  concerning  the  doctrines  of  predestination 
and  original  sin,  which  has  now  made  its  way  even 
amidst  Puritans  themselves. 

Here  the  emancipation  has  reached  the  Puritans ; 
but  it  proceeded  from  the  Church.  That  Puritanism 
is  yet  emancipated  from  the  popular  doctrine  of  justi- 
fication cannot  be  asserted.  On  the  contrary,  the 
more  it  loosens  its  hold  on  the  doctrine  of  predestina- 
tion the  more  it  tightens  it  on  that  of  justification. 
"We  shall  have  occasion  by  and  by  to  discuss  Wesley's 
words  :  "  Plead  thou  solely  the  blood  of  the  Covenant,  the 
ransom  paid  for  thy  proud  stubborn  soul !  "  and  to  show 
how  modern  Methodism  glories  in  holding  aloft  as  its 
standard  this  teaching  of  Wesley's,  and  this  teaching 
above  all.  The  many  tracts  which  have  lately  been 
sent  me  in  reference  to  this  subject  go  all  the  same 
way.     Like  Luther,  they  hold  that  "  all  heretics  have 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  119 

continually  failed  in  this  one  point,  that  they  do  not 
rightly  understand  or  know  the  article  of  justification" 
"do  not  see"  (to  continue  to  use  Luther's  words) 
"  that  by  none  other  sacrifice  or  offering  could  God's 
fierce  anger  be  appeased,  but  by  the  precious  blood 
of  the  Son  of  God."  That  this  doctrine  is  founded 
upon  an  entire  misunderstanding  of  St.  Paul's  writ- 
ings we  have  shown;  that  there  is  very  visible  a 
tendency  in  the  minds  of  religious  people  to  outgrow 
it,  is  true,  but  where  alone  does  this  tendency  mani- 
fest itself  with  any  steadiness  or  power?  In  the 
Church.  The  inevitable  movement  of  growth  will 
in  time  extend  itself  to  Puritanism  also.  Let  it  be 
remembered  in  that  day  that  not  only  does  the  move- 
ment come  to  Puritanism  from  the  Church,  but  it 
comes  to  Churchmen  of  our  century  from  a  seed  of 
growth  and  development  inherent  in  the  Church,  and 
which  was  manifest  in  the  Church  long  ago  ! 

That  the  accompaniments  of  the  doctrine  of  justifi- 
cation, the  tenets  of  conversion,  instantaneous  sancti- 
fication,  assurance,  and  sinless  perfection, — tenets 
which  are  not  the  essence  of  Wesley,  but  which  are 
the  essence  of  Wesleyan  Methodism,  and  which  have 
in  them  so  much  that  is  delusive  and  dangerous, — 
that  these  should  have  been  discerningly  judged  by 
that  mixture  of  piety  and  sobriety  which  marks  Angli- 
cans of  the  best  type,  such  as  Bishop  Wilson,1  will 

1  For  example,  what  an  antidote  to  the  perilous  Methodist 
doctrine  of  instantaneous  sanctification  is  this  saying  of  Bishop 
Wilson:  "He  who  fancies  that  his  mind  may  effectually  be 
changed  in  a  short  time,  deceives  himself." 


120  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

surprise  no  one.  But  years  before  Wesley  was  born, 
the  fontal  doctrine  itself, — Wesley's  "  Plead  thou  solely 
the  blood  of  the  Covenant/" — had  been  criticised  by 
Hammond  thus,  and  the  signal  of  deliverance  from 
the  Lutheran  doctrine  of  justification  given :  "  The 
solifidian  looks  upon  his  faith  as  the  utmost  accom- 
plishment and  end,  and  not  only  as  the  first  elements 
of  his  task,  which  is, — the  super  strutting  of  good  life. 
The  solifidian  believes  himself  to  have  the  only  sancti- 
fied necessary  doctrines,  that  having  them  renders  his 
condition  safe,  and  every  man  who  believes  them  a 
pure  Christian  professor.  In  respect  of  solifidianism 
it  is  worth  remembering  what  Epiphanius  observes  of 
the  primitive  times,  that  wickedness  was  the  only  heresy, 
that  impious  and  pious  living  divided  the  whole  Chris- 
tian world  into  erroneous  and  orthodox." 

In  point  of  fact,  therefore,  the  historic  Church  in 
England,  not  existing  for  special  opinions,  but  pro- 
ceeding by  development,  has  shown  much  greater 
freedom  of  mind  as  regards  the  doctrines  of  election, 
original  sin,  and  justification,  than  the  Nonconform- 
ists have ;  and  has  refused,  in  spite  of  Puritan  pres- 
sure, to  tie  herself  too  strictly  to  these  doctrines,  to 
make  them  all  in  all.  She  thus  both  has  been  and  is 
more  serviceable  than  Puritanism  to  religious  pro- 
gress ;  because  the  separating  for  opinions,  which  is 
proper  to  Puritanism,  rivets  the  separatist  to  those 
opinions,  and  is  thus  opposed  to  that  development 
and  gradual  exhibiting  of  the  full  sense  of  the  Bible 
and  Christianity,  which  is  essential  to  religious  pro- 
gress.    To  separate  for  the  doctrine  of  predestination, 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  121 

of  justification,  of  scriptural  church  -  discipline,  is  to 
be  false  to  the  idea  of  development,  to  imagine  that 
you  can  seize  the  absolute  sense  of  Scripture  from 
your  own  present  point  of  view,  and  to  cut  yourself 
off  from  growth  and  gradual  illumination.  That  a 
comparison  between  the  course  things  have  taken 
in  Puritanism  and  in  the  Church  goes  to  prove  the 
truth  of  this  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  what  I  have  been 
trying  to  show  hitherto ;  in  what  remains  I  purpose 
to  show  how,  as  a  matter  of  theory  and  antecedent 
likelihood,  it  seems  probable  and  natural  that  so  this 
should  be. 

A  historic  Church  cannot  choose  but  allow  the 
principle  of  development,  for  it  is  written  in  its 
institutions  and  history.  An  admirable  writer,  in 
a  book  which  is  one  of  his  least  known  works,  but 
which  contains,  perhaps,  even  a  greater  number  of 
profound  and  valuable  ideas  than  any  other  one  of 
them,  has  set  forth,  both  persuasively  and  truly,  the 
impression  of  this  sort  which  Church-history  cannot 
but  convey.  "  We  have  to  account,"  says  Dr.  New- 
man, in  his  Essay  on  Development,  "  for  that  apparent 
variation  and  growth  of  doctrine  which  embarrasses 
us  when  we  would  consult  history  for  the  true  idea 
of  Christianity.  The  increase  and  expansion  of  the 
Christian  creed  and  ritual,  and  the  variations  which 
have  attended  the  process  in  the  case  of  individual 
writers  and  churches,  are  the  necessary  attendants  on 
any  philosophy  or  polity  which  takes  possession  of  the 
intellect  and  heart,  and  has  had  any  wide  or  extended 
dominion.      From  the  nature  of  the  human  mind, 


122  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

time  is  necessary  for  the  full  comprehension  and 
perfection  of  great  ideas.  The  highest  and  most 
wonderful  truths,  though  communicated  to  the  world 
once  for  all  by  inspired  teachers,  could  not  be  com- 
prehended all  at  once  by  the  recipients ;  but,  as 
admitted  and  transmitted  by  minds  not  inspired,  and 
through  media  which  were  human,  have  required 
only  the  longer  time  and  deeper  thought  for  their 
full  elucidation."  And  again:  "Ideas  may  remain 
when  the  expression  of  them  is  indefinitely  varied. 
Nay,  one  cause  of  corruption  in  religion  is  the  refusal 
to  follow  the  course  of  doctrine  as  it  moves  on,  and 
an  obstinacy  in  the  notions  of  the  past.  So  our  Lord 
found  his  people  precisians  in  their  obedience  to  the 
letter ;  he  condemned  them  for  not  being  led  on  to 
its  spirit, — that  is,  its  development.  The  Gospel  is 
the  development  of  the  Law ;  yet  what  difference 
seems  wider  than  that  which  separates  the  unbending 
rule  of  Moses  from  the  grace  and  truth  which  came 
by  Jesus  Christ  %  The  more  claim  an  idea  has  to  be 
considered  living,  the  more  various  will  be  its  aspects; 
and  the  more  social  and  political  is  its  nature,  the 
more  complicated  and  subtle  will  be  its  developments, 
and  the  longer  and  more  eventful  will  be  its  course. 
Such  is  Christianity."  And  yet  once  more  :  "It 
may  be  objected  that  inspired  documents,  such  as 
the  Holy  Scriptures,  at  once  determine  doctrine 
without  further  trouble.  But  they  were  intended  to 
create  an  idea,  and  that  idea  is  not  in  the  sacred  text, 
but  in  the  mind  of  the  reader ;  and  the  question  is, 
whether  that  idea  is   communicated   to   him   in   its 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  123 

completeness  and  minute  accuracy  on  its  first  appre- 
hension, or  expands  in  his  heart  and  intellect,  and 
comes  to  perfection  in  the  course  of  time.  If  it  is 
said  that  inspiration  supplied  the  place  of  this 
development  in  the  first  recipients  of  Christianity, 
still  the  time  at  length  came  when  its  recipients 
ceased  to  be  inspired ;  and  on  these  recipients  the 
revealed  truths  would  fall  as  in  other  cases,  at  first 
vaguely  and  generally,  and  would  afterwards  be 
completed  by  developments." 

The  notion  thus  admirably  expounded  of  a  gradual 
understanding  of  the  Bible,  a  progressive  develop- 
ment of  Christianity,  is  the  same  which  was  in 
Bishop  Butler's  mind  when  he  laid  down  in  his 
Analogy  that  "the  Bible  contains  many  truths  as 
yet  undiscovered."  "And  as,"  he  says,  "the  whole 
scheme  of  Scripture  is  not  yet  understood,  so,  if  it 
ever  comes  to  be  understood,  before  the  restitution 
of  all  things  and  without  miraculous  interpositions, 
it  must  be  in  the  same  way  as  natural  knowledge  is 
come  at, — by  the  continuance  and  progress  of  learning 
and  of  liberty,  and  by  particular  persons  attending 
to,  comparing,  and  pursuing  intimations  scattered  up 
and  down  it,  which  are  overlooked  and  disregarded 
by  the  generality  of  the  world.  For  this  is  the  way 
in  which  all  improvements  are  made ;  by  thoughtful 
men's  tracing  on  obscure  hints,  as  it  were,  dropped 
as  by  nature  accidentally,  or  which  seem  to  come 
into  our  minds  by  chance."  And  again :  "  Our 
existence  is  not  only  successive,  as  it  must  be  of 
necessity,    but   one   state   of   our   life  and   being  is 


124  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

appointed  by  God  to  be  a  preparation  for  another, 
and  that  to  be  the  means  of  attaining  to  another 
succeeding  one ;  infancy  to  childhood,  childhood  to 
youth,  youth  to  mature  age.  Men  are  impatient 
and  for  precipitating  things ;  but  the  author  of  nature 
appears  deliberate  throughout  his  operations,  accom- 
plishing his  natural  ends  by  slow  successive  steps. 
Thus,  in  the  daily  course  of  natural  providence,  God 
operates  in  the  very  same  manner  as  in  the  dispensa- 
tion of  Christianity;  making  one  thing  subservient 
to  another,  this  to  somewhat  further ;  and  so  on, 
through  a  progressive  series  of  means  which  extend 
both  backward  and  forward,  beyond  our  utmost  view. 
Of  this  manner  of  operation  everything  we  see  in  the 
course  of  nature  is  as  much  an  instance  as  any  part 
of  the  Christian  dispensation." 

All  this  is  indeed  incomparably  well  said ;  and 
with  Dr.  Newman  we  may,  on  the  strength  of  it  all, 
beyond  any  doubt,  "fairly  conclude  that  Christian 
doctrine  admits  of  formal,  legitimate,  and  true 
developments ; "  that  "  the  whole  Bible  is  written 
on  the  principle  of  development." 

Dr.  Newman,  indeed,  uses  this  idea  in  a  manner 
which  seems  to  us  arbitrary  and  condemned  by  the 
idea  itself.  He  uses  it  in  support  of  the  pretensions 
of  the  Church  of  Eome  to  an  infallible  authority  on 
points  of  doctrine.  He  says,  with  much  ingenuity, 
to  Protestants :  The  doctrines  you  receive  are  no 
more  on  the  face  of  the  Bible,  or  in  the  plain  teaching 
of  the  ante-Nicene  Church,  which  alone  you  consider 
pure,  than  the  doctrines  you  reject.      The  doctrine 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  125 

of  the  Trinity  is  a  development,  as  much  as  the 
doctrine  of  Purgatory.  Both  of  them  are  develop- 
ments made  by  the  Church,  by  the  post-Nicene 
Church.  The  determination  of  the  Canon  of  Scrip- 
ture, a  thing  of  vital  importance  to  you  who  acknow- 
ledge no  authority  but  Scripture,  is  a  development 
due  to  the  post-Nicene  Church. — And  thus  Dr. 
Newman  would  compel  Protestants  to  admit  that 
which  is,  he  declares,  in  itself  reasonable, — namely, 
"  the  probability  of  the  appointment  in  Christianity 
of  an  external  authority  to  decide  upon  the  true 
developments  of  doctrine  and  practice  in  it,  thereby 
separating  them  from  the  mass  of  mere  human 
speculation,  extravagance,  corruption,  and  error,  in 
and  out  of  which  they  grow.  This  is  the  doctrine 
of  the  infallibility  of  the  Church,  of  faith  and 
obedience  towards  the  Church,  founded  on  the  prob- 
ability of  its  never  erring  in  its  declarations  or 
commands." 

Now,  asserted  in  this  absolute  way,  and  extended 
to  doctrine  as  well  as  discipline,  to  speculative  thought 
as  well  as  to  Christian  practice,  Dr.  Newman's  con- 
clusion seems  at  variance  with  his  own  theory  of 
development,  and  to  be  something  like  an  instance  of 
what  Bishop  Butler  criticises  when  he  says:  "Men 
are  impatient  and  for  precipitating  things."  But  Dr. 
Newman  has  himself  supplied  us  with  a  sort  of  com- 
mentary on  these  words  of  Butler's  which  is  worth 
quoting,  because  it  throws  more  light  on  our  point 
than  Butler's  few  words  can  throw  on  it  by  them- 
selves.    Dr.  Newman  says  :   "  Development  is  not  an 


126  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

effect  of  wishing  and  resolving,  or  of  forced  enthusiasm, 
or  of  any  mechanism  of  reasoning,  or  of  any  mere 
subtlety  of  intellect;  but  comes  of  its  own  innate 
power  of  expansion  within  the  mind  in  its  season, 
though  with  the  use  of  reflection  and  argument  and 
original  thought,  more  or  less  as  it  may  happen,  with 
a  dependence  on  the  ethical  growth  of  the  mind  itself, 
and  with  a  reflex  influence  upon  it." 

It  is  impossible  to  point  out  more  sagaciously  and 
expressively  the  natural,  spontaneous,  free  character 
of  true  development ;  how  such  a  development  must 
follow  laws  of  its  own,  may  often  require  vast  periods 
of  time,  cannot  be  hurried,  cannot  be  stopped.  And 
so  far  as  Christianity  deals, — as,  in  its  metaphysical 
theology,  it  does  abundantly  deal, — with  thought  and 
speculation,  it  must  surely  be  admitted  that  for  its 
true  and  ultimate  development  in  this  line  more  time 
is  required,  and  other  conditions  have  to  be  fulfilled, 
than  we  have  had  already.  So  far  as  Christian  doc- 
trine contains  speculative  philosophical  ideas,  never 
since  its  origin  have  the  conditions  been  present  for 
determining  these  adequately;  certainly  not  in  the 
mediaeval  Church,  which  so  dauntlessly  strove  to 
determine  them.  And  therefore  on  every  Creed 
and  Council  is  judgment  passed  in  Bishop  Butler's 
sentence :  "  The  Bible  contains  many  truths  as  yet  un- 
discovered." 

The  Christian  religion  has  practice  for  its  great 
end  and  aim ;  but  it  raises,  as  any  one  can  see,  and  as 
Church-history  proves,  numerous  and  great  questions 
of  philosophy  and  of  scientific  criticism.     Well,  for 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  127 

the  true  elucidation  of  such  questions,  and  for  their 
final  solution,  time  and  favourable  developing  condi- 
tions are  confessedly  necessary.  From  the  end  of 
the  apostolic  age  !and  of  the  great  fontal  burst  of 
Christianity,  down  to  the  present  time,  have  such 
conditions  ever  existed,  in  the  Christian  communities, 
for  determining  adequately  the  questions  of  philosophy 
and  scientific  criticism  which  the  Christian  religion 
starts  1  God,  creation,  will,  evil,  propitiation,  immortality, 
— these  terms  and  many  more  of  the  same  kind,  how- 
ever much  they  might  in  the  Bible  be  used  in  a 
concrete  and  practical  manner,  yet  plainly  had  in 
themselves  a  provocation  to  abstract  thought,  carried 
with  them  the  occasions  of  a  criticism  and  a  philo- 
sophy, which  must  sooner  or  later  make  its  appear- 
ance in  the  Church.  It  did  make  its  appearance,  and 
the  question  is  whether  it  has  ever  yet  appeared  there 
under  conditions  favourable  to  its  true  development. 
Surely  this  is  best  elucidated  by  considering  whether 
questions  of  criticism  and  philosophy  in  general  ever 
had  one  of  their  happy  moments,  their  times  for 
successful  development,  in  the  early  and  middle  ages 
of  Christendom  at  all,  or  have  had  one  of  them  in  the 
Christian  churches,  as  such,  since.  All  these  questions 
hang  together,  and  the  time  that  is  improper  for 
solving  one  sort  of  them  truly,  is  improper  for  solving 
the  others. 

Well,  surely,  historic  criticism,  criticism  of  style, 
criticism  of  nature,  no  one  would  go  to  the  early  or 
middle  ages  of  the  Church  for  illumination  on  these 
matters.     How  then  should  those  ages  develop  sue- 


128  PUEITANISM  AND  THE 

cessfully  a  philosophy  of  theology,  or  in  other  words, 
a  criticism  of  physics  and  metaphysics,  which  involves 
the  three  other  criticisms  and  more  besides  1  Church- 
theology  is  an  elaborate  attempt  at  a  philosophy  of 
theology,  at  a  philosophical  criticism.  In  Greece, 
before  Christianity  appeared,  there  had  been  a  favour- 
ing period  for  the  development  of  such  a  criticism ;  a 
considerable  movement  of  it  took  place,  and  consider- 
able results  were  reached.  When  Christianity  began, 
this  movement  was  in  decadence;  it  declined  more 
and  more  till  it  died  quite  out ;  it  revived  very  slowly, 
and  as  it  waxed,  the  mediaeval  Church  waned.  The 
doctrine  of  universals  is  a  question  of  philosophy 
discussed  in  Greece,  and  re-discussed  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  Whatever  light  this  doctrine  receives  from 
Plato's  treatment  of  it,  or  Aristotle's,  in  whatever 
state  they  left  it,  will  any  one  say  that  the  Nominalists 
and  Realists  brought  any  more  light  to  it,  that  they 
developed  it  in  any  way,  or  could  develop  it  ]  For 
the  same  reason,  St.  Augustine's  criticism  of  God's 
eternal  decrees,  original  sin,  and  justification,  the 
criticism  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  on  them,  the  de- 
cisions of  the  Church  on  them,  are  of  necessity,  and 
from  the  very  nature  of  things,  inadequate,  because 
being  philosophical  developments,  they  are  made  in 
an  age  when  the  forces  for  true  philosophical  develop- 
ment are  waning  or  wanting. 

So  when  Hooker  says  most  truly :  "  Our  belief  in 
the  Trinity,  the  co-eternity  of  the  Son  of  God  with 
his  Father,  the  proceeding  of  the  Spirit  from  the 
Father  and  the  Son,  with  other  principal  points  the 


CHUKCH  OF  ENGLAND.  129 

necessity  whereof  is  by  none  denied,  are  notwith- 
standing in  Scripture  nowhere  to  be  found  by  express 
literal  mention,  only  deduced  they  are  out  of  Scripture 
by  collection  ; " — when  Hooker  thus  points  out,  what 
is  undoubtedly  the  truth,  that  these  Church-doctrines 
are  developments,  we  may  add  this  other  truth  equally 
undoubted, — that  being  philosophical  developments, 
they  are  developments  of  a  kind  which  the  Church 
has  never  yet  had  the  right  conditions  for  making 
adequately,  any  more  than  it  has  had  the  conditions 
for  developing  out  of  what  is  said  in  the  Book  of 
Genesis  a  true  philosophy  of  nature,  or  out  of  what 
is  said  in  the  Book  of  Daniel,  a  true  philosophy  of 
history.  It  matters  nothing  whether  the  scientific 
truth  was  there,  and  the  problem  was  to  extract  it ; 
or  not  there,  and  the  problem  was  to  understand  why 
it  was  not  there,  and  the  relation  borne  by  what  ivas 
there  to  the  scientific  truth.  The  Church  had  no 
means  of  solving  either  the  one  problem  or  the  other. 
And  this  from  no  fault  at  all  of  the  Church,  but  for 
the  same  reason  that  she  was  unfitted  to  solve  a 
difficulty  in  Aristotle's  Physics  or  Plato's  Timceus, 
and  to  determine  the  historical  value  of  Herodotus 
or  Livy;  simply  from  the  natural  operation  of  the 
law  of  development,  which  for  success  in  philo- 
sophy and  criticism  requires  certain  conditions, 
which  in  the  early  and  mediaeval  Church  were 
not  to  be  found. 

And  when  the  movement  of  philosophy  and  criti- 
cism came  with  the  Renascence,  this  movement  was 
almost  entirely  outside  the  Churches,  whether  Catholic 

VOL.  VII.  K 


130  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

or  Protestant,  and  not  inside  them.  It  worked  in 
men  like  Descartes  and  Bacon,  and  not  in  men  like 
Luther  and  Calvin  ;  so  that  the  doctrine  of  these  two 
eminent  personages,  Luther  and  Calvin,  so  far  as  it 
was  a  philosophical  and  critical  development  from 
Scripture,  had  no  more  likelihood  of  being  an  adequate 
development  than  the  doctrine  of  the  Council  of  Trent. 
And  so  it  has  gone  on  to  this  day.  Philosophy 
and  criticism  have  become  a  great  power  in  the  world, 
and  inevitably  tend  to  alter  and  develop  Church- 
doctrine,  so  far  as  this  doctrine  is,  as  to  a  great  extent 
it  is,  philosophical  and  critical.  Yet  the  seat  of  the 
developing  force  is  not  in  the  Church  itself,  but  else- 
where ;  its  influences  filter  strugglingly  into  the 
Church,  and  the  Church  slowly  absorbs  and  incor- 
porates them.  And  whatever  hinders  their  filtering 
in  and  becoming  incorporated,  hinders  truth  and  the 
natural  progress  of  things. 

While,  therefore,  we  entirely  agree  with  Dr.  New- 
man and  with  the  great  Anglican  divines  that  the 
whole  Bible  is  written  on  the  principle  of  develop- 
ment, and  that  Christianity  in  its  doctrine  and 
discipline  is  and  must  be  a  development  of  the  Bible, 
we  yet  cannot  agree  that  for  the  adequate  develop- 
ment of  Christian  doctrine,  so  far  as  theology  exhibits 
this  metaphysically  and  scientifically,  the  Church, 
whether  anti-Nicene  or  post-Nicene,  has  ever  yet  fur- 
nished a  channel.  Thought  and  science  follow  their 
own  law  of  development,  they  are  slowly  elaborated 
in  the  growth  and  forward  pressure  of  humanity,  in 
what  Shakspeare  calls, — 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  131 

"  the  prophetic  soul 

Of  the  wide  world  dreaming  on  things  to  come  ; " 

and  their  ripeness  and  unripeness,  as  Dr.  Newman 
most  truly  says,  are  not  an  effect  of  our  wishing  or 
resolving.  Bather  do  they  seem  brought  about  by  a 
power  such  as  Goethe  figures  by  the  Zeit-Geist  or 
Time-Spirit,  and  St.  Paul  describes  as  a  divine  power 
revealing  additions  to  what  we  possess  already. 

But  sects  of  men  are  apt  to  be  shut  up  in  sectarian 
ideas  of  their  own,  and  to  be  less  open  to  new  general 
ideas  than  the  main  body  of  men ;  therefore  St. 
Paul  in  the  same  breath  exhorts  to  unity.  What 
may  justly  be  conceded  to  the  Catholic  Church  is, 
that  in  her  idea  of  a  continuous  developing  power  in 
united  Christendom  to  work  upon  the  data  furnished 
by  the  Bible,  and  produce  new  combinations  from 
them  as  the  growth  of  time  required  it,  she  followed 
a  true  instinct.  But  the  right  philosophical  develop- 
ments she  vainly  imagined  herself  to  have  had  the 
power  to  produce,  and  her  attempts  in  this  direction 
were  at  most  but  a  prophecy  of  this  power,  as  alchemy 
is  said  to  have  been  a  prophecy  of  chemistry. 

With  developments  of  discipline  and  church-order 
it  is  very  different.  The  Bible  raises,  as  we  have 
seen,  many  and  great  questions  of  philosophy  and 
criticism ;  still,  essentially  the  Church  was  not  a  cor- 
poration for  speculative  purposes,  but  a  corporation 
for  purposes  of  moral  growth  and  of  practice.  Terms 
like  God,  creation,  icitt,  evil,  propitiation,  immortality, 
evoke,  as  we  have  said,  and  must  evoke,  sooner  or 
later,  a  philosophy ;  but  to  evoke  this  was  the  accident 


132  PUEITANISM  AND  THE 

and  not  the  essence  of   Christianity.     What,  then, 
was  the  essence  ? 

An  ingenious  writer,  as  unlike  Dr.  Newman  as  it 
is  possible  to  conceive,  has  lately  told  us.  In  an 
article  in  Fraser's  Magazine, — an  article  written  with 
great  vigour  and  acuteness,  this  writer  advises  us  to 
return  to  Paley,  whom  we  were  beginning  to  neglect, 
because  the  real  important  essence  of  Christianity,  or 
rather,  to  quote  quite  literally,  "  the  only  form  of 
Christianity  which  is  worthy  of  the  serious  considera- 
tion of  rational  men,  is  Protestantism  as  stated  by 
Paley  and  his  school."  And  why?  "Because  this 
Protestantism  enables  the  saint  to  prove  to  the 
worldly  man  that  Christ  threatened  him  with  hell- 
fire,  and  proved  his  power  to  threaten  by  rising  from 
the  dead  and  ascending  into  heaven ;  and  these  alle- 
gations are  the  fundamental  assertions  of  Christianity" 

Now  it  may  be  said  that  this  is  a  somewhat  con- 
tracted view  of  "  the  unsearchable  riches  of  Christ ; " 
but  we  will  not  quarrel  with  it.  And  this  for  several 
reasons.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  the  view  often  taken 
by  popular  theology.  In  the  second  place,  it  is  the 
view  best  fitted  to  serve  its  Benthamite  author's 
object,  which  is  to  get  Christianity  out  of  the  way 
altogether.  In  the  third  place,  its  shortness  gives  us 
courage  to  try  and  do  what  is  the  hardest  thing  in 
the  world,  namely,  to  pack  a  statement  of  the  main 
drift  of  Christianity  into  a  few  lines  of  nearly  as  short 
compass. 

What  then  was,  in  brief,  the  Christian  gospel,  or 
"  good  news  % "     It  was  this  :  The  kingdom  of  God  is 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  133 

come  unto  you.  The  power  of  Jesus  upon  the  multi- 
tudes who  heard  him  gladly,  was  not  that  by  rising 
from  the  dead  and  ascending  into  heaven  he  enabled 
the  saint  to  prove  to  the  worldly  man  the  certainty  of 
hell-fire  (for  he  had  not  yet  done  so)  •  but  that  he  talked 
to  them  about  the  kingdom  of  God.1  And  what  is  the 
kingdom  of  God  or  kingdom  of  heaven  %  It  is  this  : 
God's  will  done,  as  in  heaven  so  on  earth.  And  how  was 
this  come  to  mankind  1  Because  Jesus  is  come  to  save 
his  people  from  their  sins.  And  what  is  being  saved  from 
our  sins  1  This  :  Entering  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
by  doing  the  will  of  our  Father  which  is  in  heaven.  And 
how  does  Christ  enable  us  to  do  this  1  By  teaching 
us  to  take  his  yoke  upon  us,  and  learn  of  him  to  deny  our- 
selves and  take  up  our  cross  daily  and  follow  him,  and  to 

1  Nothing  can  be  more  certain  than  that  the  kingdom  of  God 
meant  originally,  and  was  understood  to  mean,  a  Messianic 
kingdom  speedily  to  be  revealed  ;  and  that  to  this  idea  of  the 
kingdom  is  due  much  of  the  effect  which  its  preaching  exercised 
on  the  imagination  of  the  first  generation  of  Christians.  But 
nothing  is  more  certain,  also,  than  that  while  the  end  itself, 
the  Messianic  kingdom,  was  necessarily  something  intangible 
and  future,  the  way  to  the  end,  the  doing  the  will  of  God  by 
intently  following  the  voice  of  the  moral  conscience,  in  those 
duties,  above  all,  for  which  there  was  then  in  the  world  the  most 
crying  need, — the  duties  of  humbleness,  self-denial,  pureness, 
justice,  charity,  —  became  from  the  very  first  in  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  something  so  ever-present  and  practical,  and  so  associated 
with  the  essence  of  Jesus  himself,  that  the  way  to  the  kingdom 
grew  inseparable,  in  thought,  from  the  kingdom  itself,  and  was 
bathed  in  the  same  light  and  charm.  Then,  after  a  time,  as 
the  vision  of  an  approaching  Messianic  kingdom  was  dissipated, 
the  idea  of  the  perfect  accomplishment  on  earth  of  the  will  of 
God  had  to  take  the  room  of  it,  and  in  its  own  realisation  to 
place  the  ideal  of  the  true  kingdom  of  God. 


134  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

lose  our  life  for  the  purpose  of  saving  it.  So  that  St. 
Paul  might  say  most  truly  that  the  seal  of  the  sure 
foundation  of  God  in  Christianity  was  this  :  Let  every 
one  that  nameth  the  name  of  Christ  depart  from  iniquity  ; 
or,  as  he  elsewhere  expands  it :  Let  him  bring  forth 
the  fruits  of  the  Spirit, — love,  joy,  peace,  long  suffering, 
kindness,  goodness,  faith,  mildness,  self-control.1 

On  this  foundation  arose  the  Christian  Church,  and 
not  on  any  foundation  of  speculative  metaphysics.  It 
was  inevitable  that  the  speculative  metaplrysics  should 
come,  but  they  were  not  the  foundation.  When  they 
came,  the  danger  of  the  Christian  Church  was  that 
she  should  take  them  for  the  foundation.  The  people 
who  were  built  on  the  real  foundation,  who  were 
united  in  the  joy  of  Christ's  good  news,  naturally,  as 
they  came  to  know  of  one  another's  existence,  as  their 
relations  with  one  another  multiplied,  as  the  sense  of 
sympathy  in  the  possession  of  a  common  treasure 
deepened, — naturally,  I  say,  drew  together  in  one 
body,  with  an  organisation  growing  out  of  the  needs 
of  a  growing  body.  It  is  quite  clear  that  the  more 
strongly  Christians  felt  their  common  business  in 
setting  forward  upon  earth,  through  Christ's  spirit, 
the  kingdom  of  God,  the  more  they  would  be  drawn 
to  coalesce  into  one  society  for  this  business,  with  the 
natural  and  true  notion  that  the  acting  together  in 
this  way  offers  to  men  greater  helps  for  reaching  their 
aim,  presents  fewer  distractions,  and  above  all,  supplies 
a  more  animating  force  of  sympathy  and  mutual 
assurance,    than   the    acting    separately.     Only   the 

1  2  Tim.  ii.  19  ;  Gal.  v.  22,  23. 


CHUEOH  OF  ENGLAND.  135 

sense  of  differences  greater  than  the  sense  of  sympathy 
could  defeat  this  tendency. 

Dr.  Newman  has  told  us  what  an  impression  was 
once  made  upon  his  mind  by  the  sentence  :  Securus 
judical  orbis  terrarum.  We  have  shown  how,  for 
matters  of  philosophical  judgment,  not  yet  settled 
but  requiring  development  to  clear  them,  the  consent 
of  the  world,  at  a  time  when  this  clearing  develop- 
ment cannot  have  happened,  seems  to  carry  little  or 
no  weight  at  all ;  indeed,  as  to  judgment  on  these 
points,  we  should  rather  be  inclined  to  lay  down  the 
very  contrary  of  Dr.  Newman's  affirmation,  and  to 
say  :  Securus  delirat  orbis  terrarum.  But  points  of 
speculative  theology  being  out  of  the  question,  and 
the  practical  ground  and  purpose  of  man's  religion 
being  broadly  and  plainly  fixed,  we  should  be  quite 
disposed  to  concede  to  Dr.  Newman,  that  securus  colit 
orbis  terrarum; — those  pursue  this  purpose  best  who 
pursue  it  together.  For  unless  prevented  by  ex- 
traneous causes,  they  manifestly  tend,  as  the  history 
of  the  Church's  growth  shows,  to  pursue  it  together. 

Nonconformists  are  fond  of  talking  of  the  unity 
which  may  co-exist  with  separation,  and  they  say  : 
"  There  are  four  evangelists,  yet  one  gospel ;  why 
should  there  not  be  many  separate  religious  bodies, 
yet  one  Church  1 "  But  their  theory  of  unity  in 
separation  is  a  theory  palpably  invented  to  cover 
existing  facts,  and  their  argument  from  the  evan- 
gelists is  a  paralogism.  For  the  Four  Gospels  arose 
out  of  no  thought  of  divergency ;  they  were  not 
designed  as  corrections  of  one  prior  gospel,  or  of  one 


136  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

another ;  they  were  concurring  testimonies  borne  to 
the  same  fact.  But  the  several  religious  bodies  of 
Christendom  plainly  grew  out  of  an  intention  of 
divergency  ;  clearly  they  were  designed  to  correct  the 
imperfections  of  one  prior  church  and  of  each  other ; 
and  to  say  of  things  sprung  out  of  discord  that  they 
may  make  one,  because  things  sprung  out  of  concord 
may  make  one,  is  like  saying  that  because  several 
agreements  may  make  a  peace,  therefore  several  wars 
may  make  a  peace  too.  No;  without  some  strong 
motive  to  the  contrary,  men  united  by  the  pursuit  of 
a  clearly  denned  common  aim  of  irresistible  attrac- 
tiveness naturally  coalesce ;  and  since  they  coalesce 
naturally,  they  are  clearly  right  in  coalescing  and  find 
their  advantage  in  it. 

All  that  Dr.  Newman  has  so  excellently  said  about 
development  applies  here  legitimately  and  fully. 
Existence  justifies  additions  and  stages  in  existence. 
The  living  edifice  planted  on  the  foundation,  Let  every 
one  that  nameth  the  name  of  Christ  depart  from  iniquity, 
could  not  but  grow,  if  it  lived  at  all.  If  it  grew,  it 
could  not  but  make  developments,  and  all  develop- 
ments not  inconsistent  with  the  aim  of  its  original 
foundation,  and  not  extending  beyond  the  moral  and 
practical  sphere  which  was  the  sphere  of  its  original 
foundation,  are  legitimated  by  the  very  fact  of  the 
Church  having  in  the  natural  evolution  of  its  life  and 
growth  made  them.  A  boy  does  not  wear  the  clothes 
or  follow  the  ways  of  an  infant,  nor  a  man  those  of  a 
boy ;  yet  they  are  all  engaged  in  the  one  same  busi- 
ness of  developing  their  growing  life,  and  to  the  clothes 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  137 

to  be  worn  and  the  ways  to  be  followed  for  the  purpose 
of  doing  this,  nature  will,  in  general,  direct  them  safely. 
The  several  scattered  congregations  of  the  first  age  of 
Christianity  coalesced  into  one  community,  just  as  the 
several  scattered  Christians  had  earlier  still  coalesced 
into  congregations.  Why'? — because  such  was  the 
natural  course  of  things.  It  had  nothing  inconsistent 
with  the  fundamental  ground  of  Christians,  Let  every 
one  that  nameth  the  name  of  Christ  depart  from  iniquity  ; 
and  it  was  approved  by  their  growing  and  enlarging 
in  it.  They  developed  a  church  -  discipline  with  a 
hierarchy  of  bishops  and  archbishops,  which  was  not 
that  of  the  first  times ;  they  developed  church-usages, 
such  as  the  practice  of  infant  baptism,  which  were  not 
those  of  the  first  times ;  they  developed  a  church-ritual 
with  ceremonies  which  were  not  those  of  the  first 
times ; — they  developed  all  these,  just  as  they  deve- 
loped a  church-architecture  which  was  not  that  of  the 
first  times,  because  they  were  no  longer  in  the  first 
times,  and  required  for  their  expanding  growth  what 
suited  their  own  times.  They  coalesced  with  the 
State  because  they  grew  by  doing  so.  They  called 
the  faith  they  possessed  in  common  the  Catholic,  that 
is,  the  general  or  universal  faith.  They  developed, 
also,  as  we  have  seen,  dogma  or  a  theological  philo- 
sophy. Both  dogma  and  discipline  became  a  part  of 
the  Catholic  faith,  or  profession  of  the  general  body 
of  Christians. 

Now  to  develop  a  discipline,  or  form  of  outward 
life  for  itself,  the  Church,  as  has  been  said,  had 
necessarily,  like  every  other  living  thing,  the  requisite 


138  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

qualifications ;  to  develop  scientific  dogma  it  had  not. 
But  even  of  the  dogma  which  the  Church  developed 
it  may  be  said,  that,  from  the  very  nature  of  things, 
it  was  probably,  as  compared  with  the  opposing  dogma 
over  which  it  prevailed,  the  more  suited  to  the  actual 
condition  of  the  Church's  life,  and  to  the  due  progress 
of  the  divine  work  for  which  she  existed.  For  in- 
stance, whatever  may  be  scientifically  the  rights  of 
the  question  about  grace  and  free-will,  it  is  evident 
that,  for  the  Church  of  the  fifth  century,  Pelagianism 
was  the  less  inspiring  and  edifying  doctrine,  and  the 
sense  of  being  in  the  divine  hand  was  the  feeling  which 
it  was  good  for  Christians  to  be  filled  with.  What- 
ever may  be  scientifically  the  merits  of  the  dispute 
between  Arius  and  Athanasius,  for  the  Church  of  their 
time  whatever  most  exalted  or  seemed  to  exalt  Jesus 
Christ  was  clearly  the  profitable  doctrine,  the  doctrine 
most  helpful  to  that  moral  life  which  was  the  true 
life  of  the  Church. 

People,  however,  there  were  in  abundance  who 
differed  on  points  both  of  discipline  and  of  dogma 
from  the  rule  which  obtained  in  the  Church,  and  who 
separated  from  her  on  account  of  that  difference. 
These  were  the  heretics  :  separatists,  as  the  name 
implies,  for  the  sake  of  opinions.  And  the  very  name, 
therefore,  implies  that  they  were  wrong  in  separating, 
and  that  the  body  which  held  together  was  right; 
because  the  Church  exists,  not  for  the  sake  of  opinions, 
but  for  the  sake  of  moral  practice,  and  a  united  endea- 
vour after  this  is  stronger  than  a  broken  one.  Valen- 
tinians,    Marcionites,    Montanists,    Donatists,    Mani- 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  139 

chseans,  Novatians,  Eutychians,  Apollinarians,  Nestor- 
ians,  Arians,  Pelagians, — if  they  separated  on  points 
of  discipline  they  were  wrong,  because  for  developing 
its  own  fit  outward  conditions  of  life  the  body  of  a 
community  has,  as  we  have  seen,  a  real  natural  power, 
and  individuals  are  bound  to  sacrifice  their  fancies  to 
it ;  if  they  separated  on  points  of  dogma  they  were 
wrong  also,  because,  while  neither  they  nor  the  Church 
had  the  means  of  determining  such  points  adequately, 
the  true  instinct  lay  in  those  who,  instead  of  sepa- 
rating for  such  points,  conceded  them  as  the  Church 
settled  them,  and  found  their  bond  of  union,  where 
it  in  truth  really  was,  not  in  notions  about  the  co- 
eternity  of  the  Son,  but  in  the  principle  :  Let  every  one 
that  nameth  the  name  of  Christ  depart  from  iniquity. 

Does  any  one  imagine  that  all  the  Church  shared 
Augustine's  speculative  opinions  about  grace  and  pre- 
destination 1  that  many  members  of  it  did  not  rather 
incline,  as  a  matter  of  speculative  opinion,  to  the 
notions  of  Pelagius  1  Does  any  one  imagine  that  all 
who  stood  with  the  Church  and  did  not  join  them- 
selves to  the  Arians,  were  speculatively  Athanasians  1 
It  was  not  so  ;  but  they  had  a  true  feeling  for  what 
purpose  the  Gospel  and  the  Church  were  given  them, 
and  for  what  they  were  not  given  them ;  they  could 
see  that  "impious  and  pious  living,"  according  to 
that  sentence  of  Epiphanius  we  have  quoted  from 
Hammond,  "  divided  the  whole  Christian  world  into 
erroneous  and  orthodox  ; "  and  that  it  was  not 
worth  while  to  suffer  themselves  to  be  divided  for 
anything  else. 


140  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

And  though  it  will  be  said  that  separatists  for 
opinions  on  points  of  discipline  and  dogma  have  often 
asserted,  and  sometimes  believed,  that  piety  and  im- 
piety were  vitally  concerned  in  these  points ;  yet  here 
again  the  true  religious  instinct  is  that  which  discerns, 
— what  is  seldom  so  very  obscure, — whether  they  are 
in  truth  thus  vitally  concerned  or  not ;  and,  if  they 
are  not,  cannot  be  perverted  into  fancying  them  con- 
cerned and  breaking  unity  for  them.  This,  I .  say,  is 
the  true  religious  instinct,  the  instinct  which  most 
clearly  seizes  the  essence  and  aim  of  the  Christian 
Gospel  and  of  the  Christian  Church.  But  fidelity  to 
it  leaves,  also,  the  way  least  closed  to  the  admission 
of  true  developments  of  speculative  thought,  when 
the  time  is  come  for  them,  and  to  the  incorporation 
of  these  true  developments  with  the  ideas  and  practice 
of  Christians. 

Is  there  not,  then,  any  separation  which  is  right 
and  reasonable?  Yes,  separation  on  plain  points  of 
morals.  For  these  involve  the  very  essence  of  the 
Christian  Gospel,  and  the  very  ground  on  which  the 
Christian  Church  is  built.  The  sale  of  indulgences, 
if  deliberately  instituted  and  persisted  in  by  the  main 
body  of  the  Church,  afforded  a  valid  reason  for  break- 
ing unity ;  the  doctrine  of  purgatory,  or  of  the  real 
presence,  did  not. 

However,  a  cosmopolitan  church-order,  commenced 
when  the  political  organisation  of  Christians  was  also 
cosmopolitan, — when,  that  is,  the  nations  of  Europe 
were  politically  one  in  the  unity  of  the  Eoman  Empire, 
— might  well  occasion  difficulties  as  the  nations  solidi- 


CHUECH  OF  ENGLAND.  141 

fied  into  independent  states  with  a  keen  sense  of  their 
independent  life ;  so  that,  the  cosmopolitan  type  dis- 
appearing for  civil  affairs,  and  being  replaced  by  the 
national  type,  the  same  disappearance  and  replace- 
ment tended  to  prevail  in  ecclesiastical  affairs  also. 
But  this  was  a  political  difficulty,  not  a  religious  one, 
and  it  raised  no  insuperable  bar  to  continued  reli- 
gious union.  A  Church  with  Anglican  liberties  might 
very  well,  the  English  national  spirit  being  what  it  is, 
have  been  in  religious  communion  with  Rome,  and  yet 
have  been  safely  trusted  to  maintain  and  develop  its 
national  liberties  to  any  extent  required. 

The  moral  corruptions  of  Rome,  on  the  other  hand, 
were  a  real  ground  for  separation.  On  their  account, 
and  solely  on  their  account,  if  they  could  not  be  got 
rid  of,  was  separation  not  only  lawful  but  necessary. 
It  has  always  been  the  averment  of  the  Church  of 
England,  that  the  change  made  in  her  at  the  Refor- 
mation was  the  very  least  change  which  was  absolutely 
necessary.  No  doubt  she  used  the  opportunity  of 
her  breach  with  Rome  to  get  rid  of  several  doctrines 
which  the  human  mind  had  outgrown;  but  it  was  the 
immoral  practice  of  Rome  that  really  moved  her  to 
separation.  And  she  maintained  that  she  merely  got 
rid  of  Roman  corruptions  which  were  immoral  and 
intolerable,  and  remained  the  old,  historic,  Catholic 
Church  of  England  still. 

The  right  to  this  title  of  Catholic  is  a  favourite 
matter  of  contention  between  bodies  of  Christians. 
But  let  us  use  names  in  their  customary  and  natural 
senses.     To  us  it  seems  that  unless  one  chooses  to 


142  PUEITANISM  AND  THE 

fight  about  words,  and  fancifully  to  put  into  the  word 
Catholic  some  occult  quality,  one  must  allow  that  the 
changes  made  in  the  Church  of  England  at  the  Refor- 
mation impaired  its  Catholicity.  The  word  Catholic 
was  meant  to  describe  the  common  or  general  profes- 
sion and  worship  of  Christendom  at  the  time  when 
the  word  arose.  Undoubtedly  this  general  profession 
and  worship  had  not  a  strict  uniformity  everywhere, 
but  it  had  a  clearly-marked  common  character ;  and 
this  well-known  type  Bede,  or  Anselm,  or  Wiclif  him- 
self, would  to  this  day  easily  recognise  in  a  Roman 
Catholic  religious  service,  but  hardly  in  an  Anglican ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  in  a  Roman  Catholic  religious 
service  an  ordinary  Anglican  finds  himself  as  much  in 
a  strange  world  and  out  of  his  usual  course,  as  in  a 
Nonconformist  meeting-house.  Something  precious 
was  no  doubt  lost  in  losing  this  common  profession 
and  worship;  but  the  loss  was,  as  we  Protestants 
maintain,  incurred  for  the  sake  of  something  yet  more 
precious  still, — the  purity  of  that  moral  practice  which 
was  the  very  cause  for  which  the  common  profession 
and  worship  existed.  Now,  it  seems  captious  to  incur 
voluntarily  a  loss  for  a  great  and  worthy  object,  and 
at  the  same  time,  by  a  conjuring  with  words,  to  try 
and  make  it  appear  that  we  have  not  suffered  the  loss 
at  all.  So  on  the  word  Catholic  we  will  not  insist  too 
jealously;  but  thus  much,  at  any  rate,  must  be  allowed 
to  the  Church  of  England, — that  she  kept  enough  of 
the  past  to  preserve,  as  far  as  this  nation  was  con- 
cerned, her  continuity,  to  be  still  the  historic  Church 
of  England  ;  and  that  she  avoided  the  error,  to  which 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  143 

there  was  so  much  to  draw  her,  and  into  which  all  the 
other  reformed  Churches  fell,  of  making  improved 
speculative  doctrinal  opinions  the  main  ground  of  her 
separation. 

A  Nonconformist  newspaper,  it  is  true,  reproaching 
the  Church  with  what  is,  in  our  opinion,  her  greatest 
praise,  namely,  that  on  points  of  doctrinal  theology 
she  is  "a  Church'  that  does  not  know  her  own  mind," 
roundly  asserts,  as  we  have  already  mentioned,  that 
"no  man  in  his  senses  can  deny  that  the  Church  of 
England  was  meant  to  be  a  thoroughly  Protestant 
and  Evangelical,  and  it  may  be  said  Calvinistic 
Church."  But  not  only  does  the  whole  course  of 
Church-history  disprove  such  an  assertion,  and  show 
that  this  is  what  the  Puritans  always  wanted  to  make 
the  Church,  and  what  the  Church  would  never  be 
made,  but  we  can  disprove  it,  too,  out  of  the  mouths 
of  the  very  Puritans  themselves.  At  the  Savoy  Con- 
ference the  Puritans  urged  that  "  our  first  reformers 
out  of  their  great  wisdom  did  at  that  time  (of  the 
Reformation)  so  compose  the  Liturgy,  as  to  win  upon 
the  Papists,  and  to  draw  them  into  their  Church  com- 
munion by  varying  as  little  as  they  could  from  the  Romish 
forms  before  in  use;"  and  this  they  alleged  as  their 
great  plea  for  purging  the  Liturg}?-.  And  the  Bishops 
resisted,  and  upheld  the  proceeding  of  the  reformers 
as  the  essential  policy  of  the  Church  of  England ;  as 
indeed  it  was,  and  till  this  day  has  continued  to  be. 
No ;  the  Church  of  England  did  not  give  her  energies 
to  inventing  a  new  church-order  for  herself  and  fight- 
ing for  it ;  to  singling  out  two  or  three  speculative 


144  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

dogmas  as  the  essence  of  Christianity,  and  fighting 
for  them.  She  set  herself  to  carry  forward,  and  as 
much  as  possible  on  the  old  lines,  the  old  practical 
work  and  proper  design  of  the  Christian  Church ;  and 
this  is  what  left  her  mind  comparatively  open,  as  we 
have  seen,  for  the  admission  of  philosophy  and  criti- 
cism, as  they  slowly  developed  themselves  outside  the 
Church  and  filtered  into  her;  an  admission  which 
confessedly  proves  just  now  of  capital  importance. 

This  openness  of  mind  the  Puritans  have  not  shared 
with  the  Church,  and  how  should  they  have  shared 
it  1  They  are  founded  on  the  negation  of  that  idea 
of  development  which  plays  so  important  a  part  in 
the  life  of  the  Church ;  on  the  assumption  that  there 
is  a  divinely  appointed  church -order  fixed  once  for 
all  in  the  Bible,  and  that  they  have  adopted  it ;  that 
there  is  a  doctrinal  scheme  of  faith,  justification,  and 
imputed  righteousness,  which  is  the  test  of  a  standing 
or  falling  church  and  the  essence  of  the  gospel,  and 
that  they  have  extracted  it.  These  are  assumptions 
which,  as  they  make  union  impossible,  so  also  make 
growth  impossible.  The  Church  makes  church-order 
a  matter  of  ecclesiastical  constitution,  is  founded  on 
moral  practice,  and  though  she  develops  speculative 
dogma,  does  not  allow  that  this  or  that  dogma  is  the 
essence  of  Christianity. 

"Congregational  Nonconformists,"  say  the  Inde- 
pendents, "  can  never  be  incorporated  into  an  organic 
union  with  Anglican  Episcopacy,  because  there  is  not 
even  the  shadow  of  an  outline  of  it  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  it  is  our  assertion  and  profound  belief  that 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  I  L5 

Christ  and  the  Apostles  have  given  us  all  the  laws 
that  are  necessary  for  the  constitution  and  govern- 
ment of  the  Church."1  "Whatever  may  come,"  says 
the  President  of  the  Wesleyan  Conference,  "  we  are 
determined  to  be  simple,  earnest  preachers  of  the 
gospel.  Whatever  may  come,  we  are  determined  to 
be  true  to  Scriptural  Protestantism.  We  would  be 
friendly  with  all  evangelical  churches,  but  we  will 
have  no  fellowship  with  the  man  of  sin.  We  will 
give  up  life  itself  rather  than  be  unfaithful  to  the  truth. 
It  is  ours  to  cry  everywhere :  '  Come,  sinners,  to  the 
gospel-feast ! ' "  And  this  gospel,  this  Scriptural  Protes- 
tantism, this  truth,  is  the  doctrine  of  justification  by 
"pleading  solely  the  blood  of  the  covenant,"  of  which 
we  have  said  so  much.  Methodists  cannot  unite  with 
a  church  which  does  not  found  itself  on  this  doctrine 
of  justification,  but  which  holds  the  doctrine  of  priestly 
absolution,  of  the  real  presence,  and  other  doctrines 
of  like  stamp ;  Congregationalists  cannot  unite  with 
a  church  which,  besides  not  resting  on  the  doctrine  of 
justification,  has  a  church-order  not  prescribed  in  the 
New  Testament. 

Now  as  Hooker  truly  says  of  those  who  "  desire 
to  draw  all  things  unto  the  determination  of  bare 
and  naked  Scripture,"  as  Dr.  Newman,  too,  has  said, 
and  as  many  others  have  said,  the  Bible  does  not 
exhibit,  drawn  out  in  black  and  white,  the  precise 
tenets  and  usages  of  any  Christian  society;  some 
inference  and  criticism  must  be  employed  to  get  at 

1  Address  of  the  Rev.  G.  W.  Conder  at  Liverpool,  in  the 
Lancashire  Congregational  Calendar  for  1869-70. 

VOL.  VII.  L 


146  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

them.  "For  the  most  part,  even  such  as  are  readiest 
to  cite  for  one  thing  five  hundred  sentences  of  Scrip- 
ture, what  warrant  have  they  that  any  one  of  them 
doth  mean  the  thing  for  which  it  is  alleged  1 "  Nay, 
"it  is  not  the  word  of  God  itself  which  doth,  or 
possibly  can,  assure  us  that  we  do  well  to  think  it  his 
word."  So  says  Hooker,  and  what  he  says  is  perfectly 
true.  A  process  of  reasoning  and  collection  is  neces- 
sary to  get  at  the  Scriptural  church  discipline  and 
the  Scriptural  Protestantism  of  the  Puritans  \  in  short, 
this  discipline  and  this  doctrine  are  developments. 
And  the  first  is  an  unsound  development,  in  a  line 
where  there  was  a  power  of  making  a  true  develop- 
ment, and  where  the  Church  made  it ;  the  second  is 
an  unsound  development  in  a  line  where  neither  the 
Church  nor  Puritanism  had  the  power  of  making  true 
developments.  But  as  it  is  the  truth  of  its  Scriptural 
Protestantism  which  in  Puritanism's  eyes  especially 
proves  the  truth  of  its  Scriptural  church-order  which 
has  this  Protestantism,  and  the  falsehood  of  the 
Anglican  church-order  which  has  much  less  of  it,  to 
abate  the  confidence  of  the  Puritans  in  their  Scrip- 
tural Protestantism  is  the  first  step  towards  their 
union,  so  much  to  be  desired,  with  the  national 
Church. 

We  say,  therefore,  that  the  doctrine  :  "  It  is  agreed 
between  God  and  the  mediator  Jesus  Christ  the  Son 
of  God,  surety  for  the  redeemed,  as  parties-contractors, 
that  the  sins  of  the  redeemed  should  be  imputed  to 
innocent  Christ,  and  he  both  condemned  and  put  to 
death  for  them  upon  this  very  condition,  that  whoso- 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  147 

ever  heartily  consents  unto  the  covenant  of  reconcilia- 
tion offered  through  Christ  shall,  by  the  imputation 
of  his  obedience  unto  them,  be  justified  and  holden 
righteous  before  God," — we  say  that  this  doctrine  is 
as  much  a  human  development  from  the  text,  "  Christ 
Jesus  came  into  the  world  to  save  sinners,"  as  the 
doctrine  of  priestly  absolution  is  a  human  develop- 
ment from  the  text,  "  Whosesoever  sins  ye  remit,  they 
are  remitted  unto  them,"  or  the  doctrine  of  the  real 
presence  from  the  text,  "Take,  eat,  this  is  my 
body."  In  our  treatise  on  St.  Paul  we  have  shown 
at  length  that  the  received  doctrine  of  justification 
is  an  unsound  development.  It  may  be  said  that 
the  doctrine  of  priestly  absolution  and  of  the  real 
presence  are  unsound  developments  also.  True,  in 
our  opinion  they  are  so ;  they  are,  like  the  doctrine 
of  justification,  developments  made  under  conditions 
which  precluded  the  possibility  of  sound  develop- 
ments in  this  line.  But  the  difference  is  here :  the 
Church  of  England  does  not  identify  Christianity 
with  these  unsound  developments ;  she  does  not  call 
either  of  them  Scriptural  Protestantism,  or  truth,  or 
the  gospel;  she  does  not  insist  that  all  who  are  in 
communion  with  her  should  hold  them ;  she  does  not 
repel  from  her  communion  those  who  hold  doctrines 
at  variance  with  them.  She  treats  them  as  she  does 
the  received  doctrine  of  justification,  to  which  she 
does  not  tie  herself  up,  but  leaves  people  to  hold  it  if 
they  please.  She  thus  provides  room  for  growth  and 
further  change  in  these  very  doctrines  themselves. 
But  to  the  doctrine  of  justification  Puritanism  ties 


148  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

itself  up,  just  as  it  tied  itself  up  formerly  to  the 
doctrine  of  predestination ;  it  calls  it  Scriptural  Pro- 
testantism, truth,  the  gospel;  it  will  have  communion 
with  none  who  do  not  hold  it ;  it  repels  communion 
with  any  who  hold  the  doctrines  of  priestly  absolution 
and  the  real  presence,  because  they  seem  to  interfere 
with  it.  Yet  it  is  really  itself  no  better  than  they. 
But  how  can  growth  possibly  find  place  in  this  doc- 
trine, while  it  is  held  in  such  a  fashion  ? 

Every  one  who  perceives  and  values  the  power 
contained  in  Christianity,  must  be  struck  to  see  how, 
at  the  present  moment,  the  progress  of  this  power 
seems  to  depend  upon  its  being  able  to  disengage 
itself  from  speculative  accretions  that  encumber  it. 
A  considerable  movement  to  this  end  is  visible  in  the 
Church  of  England.  The  most  nakedly  speculative, 
and  therefore  the  most  inevitably  defective,  parts  of 
the  Prayer  Book,  the  Athanasian  Creed  and  the 
Thirty-nine  Articles, — our  generation  will  not  improb- 
ably see  the  Prayer  Book  rid  of.  But  the  larger  the 
body  in  which  this  movement  works,  the  greater  is 
the  power  of  the  movement.  If  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land were  disestablished  to-day  it  would  be  desirable 
to  re-establish  her  to-morrow,  if  only  because  of  the 
immense  power  for  development  which  a  national  body 
possesses.  It  is  because  we  know  something  of  the 
Nonconformist  ministers,  and  what  eminent  force  and 
faculty  many  of  them  have  for  contributing  to  the 
work  of  development  now  before  the  Church,  that  we 
cannot  bear  to  see  the  waste  of  power  caused  by  their 
separatism  and  battling  with  the  Establishment,  which 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  149 

absorb  their  energies  too  much  to  suffer  them  to 
carry  forward  the  work  of  development  themselves, 
and  cut  them  off  from  aiding  those  in  the  Church  who 
carry  it  forward. 

The  political  dissent  of  the  Nonconformists,  based 
on  their  condemnation  of  the  Anglican  church-order 
as  unscriptural,  is  just  one  of  those  speculative  accre- 
tions which  we  have  spoken  of  as  encumbering  religion. 
Politics  are  a  good  thing,  and  religion  is  a  good  thing ; 
but  they  make  a  fractious  mixture.  "  The  Noncon- 
formity of  England,  and  the  Nonconformity  alone, 
has  been  the  salvation  of  England  from  Papal  tyranny 
and  kingly  misrule  and  despotism."1  This  is  the 
favourite  boast,  the  familiar  strain ;  but  this  is  really 
politics,  and  not  religion  at  all.  But  righteousness  is 
religion ;  and  the  Nonconformists  say  :  "  "Who  have 
done  so  much  for  righteousness  as  we  1 "  For  as 
much  righteousness  as  will  go  with  politics,  no  one  ; 
for  the  sterner  virtues,  for  the  virtues  of  the  Jews  of 
the  Old  Testament ;  but  these  are  only  half  of  right- 
eousness and  not  the  essentially  Christian  half.  We 
have  seen  how  St.  Paul  tore  himself  in  two,  rent  his 
life  in  the  middle  and  began  it  again,  because  he  was 
so  dissatisfied  with  a  righteousness  which  was,  after 
all,  in  its  main  features,  Puritan.  And  surely  it  can 
hardly  be  denied  that  the  more  eminently  and 
exactly  Christian  type  of  righteousness  is  the  type 
exhibited  by  Church  worthies  like  Herbert,  Ken,  and 
Wilson,  rather  than  that  exhibited  by  the  worthies 
of  Puritanism ;  the  cause  being  that  these  last  mixed 

1  The  Rev.  G.  W.  Conder,  ubi  supra. 


150  PUEITANISM  AND  THE 

politics  with  religion  so   much   more   than  did  the 
first. 

Paul,  too,  be  it  remembered,  condemned  disunion 
in  the  society  of  Christians  as  much  as  he  declined 
politics.  This  does  not,  we  freely  own,  make  against 
the  Puritan's  refusal  to  take  the  law  from  their  adver- 
saries, but  it  does  make  against  their  allegation  that 
it  does  not  matter  whether  the  society  of  Christians 
is  united  or  not,  and  that  there  are  even  great  advan- 
tages in  separatism.  If  Anglicans  maintained  that 
their  church -'order  was  written  in  Scripture  and  a 
matter  of  divine  command,  then,  Congregationalists 
maintaining  the  same  thing,  to  the  controversy 
between  them  there  could  be  no  end.  But  now, 
Anglicans  maintaining  no  such  thing,  but  that  their 
church-order  is  a  matter  of  historic  development  and 
natural  expediency,  that  it  has  grown, — which  is 
evident  enough, — and  that  the  essence  of  Christianity 
is  in  nowise  concerned  with  such  matters,  why  should 
not  the  Nonconformists  adopt  this  moderate  view  of 
the  case,  which  constrains  them  to  no  admission  of 
inferiority,  but  only  to  the  renouncing  an  imagined 
divine  superiority  and  to  the  recognition  of  an 
existing  fact,  and  allow  Church  bishops  as  a  develop- 
ment of  Catholic  antiquity,  just  as  they  have  allowed 
Church  music  and  Church  architecture,  which  are 
developments  of  the  same  1  Then  might  there  arise 
a  mighty  and  undistracted  power  of  joint  life,  which 
would  transform,  indeed,  the  doctrines  of  priestly 
absolution  and  the  real  presence,  but  which  would 
transform,    equally,  the    so-called  Scriptural  Proles- 


CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  151 

tantism  of  imputed  righteousness,  and  which  would 
do  more  for  real  righteousness  and  for  Christianity 
than  has  ever  been  done  yet. 

Tillotson's  proposals  for  comprehension,  drawn  up 
in  1689,  cannot  be  too  much  studied  at  the  present 
juncture.  These  proposals,  with  which  his  name  and 
that  of  Stillingfleet,  two  of  the  most  estimable  names 
in  the  English  Church,  are  specially  associated, 
humiliate  no  one,  refute  no  one ;  they  take  the  basis 
of  existing  facts,  and  endeavour  to  build  on  it  a  solid 
union.  They  are  worth  quoting  entire,  and  I  con- 
clude with  them.  Their  details  our  present  circum- 
stances would  modify ;  their  spirit  any  sound  plan  of 
Church-reform  must  take  as  its  rule. 

"1.  That  the  ceremonies  enjoined  or  recommended 
in  the  Liturgy  or  Canons  be  left  indifferent. 

"  2.  That  the  Liturgy  be  carefully  reviewed,  and 
such  alterations  and  changes  be  therein  made  as  may 
supply  the  defects  and  remove  as  much  as  possible 
all  ground  of  exception  to  any  part  of  it,  by  leaving 
out  the  apocryphal  lessons  and  correcting  the  trans- 
lation of  the  psalms  used  in  the  public  service 
where  there  is  need  of  it,  and  in  many  other  par- 
ticulars. 

"  3.  That  instead  of  all  former  declarations  and 
subscriptions  to  be  made  by  ministers,  it  shall  be 
sufficient  for  them  that  are  admitted  to  the  exercise 
of  their  ministry  in  the  Church  of  England  to  sub- 
scribe one  general  declaration  and  promise  to  this 
purpose,  viz :  That  we  do  submit  to  the  doctrine,  dis- 
cipline, and  worship  of  the  Church  of  England  as  it  shall 


152  PURITANISM  AND  THE 

be  established  by  law,  and  promise  to  teach  and  practise 
accordingly. 

"  4.  That  a  new  body  of  ecclesiastical  Canons  be 
made,  particularly  with  a  regard  to  a  more  effectual 
provision  for  the  reformation  of  manners  both  in 
ministers  and  people. 

"  5.  That  there  be  an  effectual  regulation  of 
ecclesiastical  courts  to  remedy  the  great  abuses  and 
inconveniences  which  by  degrees  and  length  of  time 
have  crept  into  them ;  and  particularly  that  the 
power  of  excommunication  be  taken  out  of  the  hands 
of  lay  officers  and  placed  in  the  bishop,  and  not  to  be 
exercised  for  trivial  matters,  but  upon  great  and 
weighty  occasions. 

"6.  That  for  the  future  those  who  have  been 
ordained  in  any  of  the  foreign  churches  be  not 
required  to  be  re -ordained  here,  to  render  them 
capable  of  preferment  in  the  Church. 

"  7.  That  for  the  future  none  be  capable  of  any 
ecclesiastical  benefice  or  preferment  in  the  Church  of 
England  that  shall  be  ordained  in  England  otherwise 
than  by  bishops ;  and  that  those  who  have  been 
ordained  only  by  presbyters  shall  not  be  compelled 
to  renounce  their  former  ordination.  But  because 
many  have  and  do  still  doubt  of  the  validity  of  such 
ordination,  where  episcopal  ordination  may  be  had, 
and  is  by  law  required,  it  shall  be  sufficient  for  such 
persons  to  receive  ordination  from  a  bishop  in  this  or 
the  like  form :  '  If  thou  art  not  already  ordained,  I 
ordain  thee,'  etc. ;  as  in  case  a  doubt  be  made  of  an}' 
one's  baptism,  it  is  appointed  by  the  Liturgy  that  lie 


CHUECII  OF  ENGLAND.  153 

be  baptized  in  this  form  :  '  If  thou  are  not  baptized, 
I  baptize  thee.' " 

These  are  proposals  "  to  be  made  by  the  Church  of 
England  for  the  union  of  Protestants."  Who  cannot 
see  that  the  power  of  joint  life  already  spoken  of 
would  be  far  greater  and  stronger  if  it  comprehended 
Roman  Catholics  too.  And  who  cannot  see,  also, 
that  in  the  churches  of  the  most  strong  and  living 
Roman  Catholic  countries, — in  France  and  Germany, 
— a  movement  is  in  progress  which  may  one  day 
make  a  general  union  of  Christendom  possible  ?  But 
this  will  not  be  in  our  day,  nor  is  it  business  which 
the  England  of  this  generation  is  set  to  do.  AVhat 
may  be  done  in  our  day,  what  our  generation  has  the 
call  and  the  means,  if  only  it  has  the  resolution,  to 
bring  about,  is  the  union  of  Protestants.  But  this 
union  will  never  be  on  the  basis  of  the  actual  Scrip- 
tural Protestantism  of  our  Puritans  ;  and  because,  so 
long  as  they  take  this  for  the  Gospel  or  good  news 
of  Christ,  they  cannot  possibly  unite  on  any  other 
basis,  the  first  step  towards  union  is  showing  them 
that  this  is  not  the  gospel.  If  we  have  succeeded  in 
doing  even  so  much  towards  union  as  to  convince 
one  of  them  of  this,  we  have  not  written  in  vain. 


LAST  ESSAYS 


ON 


CHURCH  AND  RELIGION 


Qu'onfonde  lafoi  profonde  > 


PREFACE. 

The  present  volume  closes  the  series  of  my  attempts 
to  deal  directly  with  questions  concerning  religion 
and  the  Church.  Indirectly  such  questions  must 
often,  in  all  serious  literary  work,  present  them- 
selves ;  but  in  this  volume  I  make  them  my  direct 
object  for  the  last  time.  Assuredly  it  was  not  for 
my  own  pleasure  that  I  entered  upon  them  at  first, 
and  it  is  with  anything  but  reluctance  that  I  now 
part  from  them.  Neither  can  I  be  ignorant  what 
offence  my  handling  of  them  has  given  to  many 
whose  goodwill  I  value,  and  with  what  relief  they 
will  learn  that  the  handling  is  now  to  cease.  Per- 
sonal considerations,  however,  ought  not  in  a  matter 
like  this  to  bear  sway ;  and  they  have  not,  in  fact, 
determined  me  to  bring  to  an  end  the  work  which  I 
had  been  pursuing.  But  the  thing  which  I  proposed 
to  myself  to  do  has,  so  far  as  my  powers  enabled  me 
to  do  it,  been  done.  What  I  wished  to  say  has  been 
said.  And  in  returning  to  devote  to  literature,  more 
strictly  so-called,  what  remains  to  me  of  life  and 
strength  and  leisure,  I  am  returning,  after  all,  to 
a  field  where  work  of  the  most  important  kind  has 


158       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION. 

now  to  be  done,  though  indirectly,  for  religion.  I 
am  persuaded  that  the  transformation  of  religion, 
which  is  essential  for  its  perpetuance,  can  be  accom- 
plished only  by  carrying  the  qualities  of  flexibility, 
perceptiveness,  and  judgment,  which  are  the  best 
fruits  of  letters,  to  whole  classes  of  the  community 
which  now  know  next  to  nothing  of  them,  and  by 
procuring  the  application  of  those  qualities  to  matters 
where  they  are  never  applied  now. 

A  survey  of  the  forms  and  tendencies  which  reli- 
gion exhibits  at  the  present  day  in  England  has  been 
made  lately  by  a  man  of  genius,  energy,  and  sym- 
pathy— Mr.  Gladstone.  Mr.  Gladstone  seems  dis- 
posed to  fix  as  the  test  of  value,  for  those  several 
forms,  their  greater  or  lesser  adaptedness  to  the  mind 
of  masses  of  our  people.  It  may  be  admitted  that 
religion  ought  to  be  capable  of  reaching  the  mind  of 
masses  of  men.  It  may  be  admitted  that  a  religion 
not  plain  and  simple,  a  religion  of  abstractions  and 
intellectual  refinements,  cannot  influence  masses  of 
men.  But  it  is  an  error  to  imagine  that  the  mind  of 
our  masses,  or  even  the  mind  of  our  religious  world, 
is  something  which  may  remain  just  as  it  now  is,  and 
that  religion  will  have  to  adapt  itself  to  that  mind 
just  as  it  now  is.  At  least  as  much  change  is 
required,  and  will  have  to  take  place,  in  that  mind 
as  in  religion.  Gross  of  perception  and  materialising 
that  mind  is,  at  present,  still  disposed  to  be.  Yet  at 
the  same  time  it  is  undeniable  that  the  old  anthropo- 
morphic and  miraculous  religion,  suited  in  many 
respects    to    such    a   mind,  no    longer  reaches  and 


PREFACE.  159 

rules  it  as  it  once  did.  A  check  and  disturbance 
to  religion  thence  arises.  But  let  us  impute  the  dis- 
turbance to  the  right  cause.  It  is  not  to  be  imputed 
merely  to  the  inadequacy  of  the  old  materialising 
religion,  and  to  be  remedied  by  giving  to  this  religion 
a  form  still  materialising,  but  more  acceptable.  It  is 
to  be  imputed,  in  at  least  an  equal  degree,  to  the 
grossness  of  perception  and  materialising  habits  of 
the  popular  mind,  which  unfit  it  for  any  religion  not 
lending  itself,  like  the  old  popular  religion,  to  those 
habits ;  while  yet,  from  other  causes,  that  old  religion 
cannot  maintain  its  sway.  And  it  is  to  be  remedied 
by  a  gradual  transformation  of  the  popular  mind,  by 
slowly  curing  it  of  its  grossness  of  perception  and 
of  its  materialising  habits,  not  by  keeping  religion 
materialistic  that  it  may  correspond  to  them. 

The  conditions  of  the  religious  question  are,  in 
truth,  profoundly  misapprehended  in  this  country. 
In  England  and  in  America  religion  has  retained  so 
much  hold  upon  the  affections  of  the  community, 
that  the  partisans  of  popular  religion  are  easily  led 
to  entertain  illusions ;  to  fancy  that  the  difficulties  of 
their  case  are  much  less  than  they  are,  that  they  can 
make  terms  which  they  cannot  make,  and  save  things 
which  they  cannot  save.  A  good  medicine  for  such 
illusions  would  be  the  perusal  of  the  criticisms  which 
Literature  and  Dogma  has  encountered  on  the  Conti- 
nent. Here  in  England  that  book  passes,  in  general, 
for  a  book  revolutionary  and  anti-religious.  In  foreign 
critics  of  the  liberal  school  it  provokes  a  feeling  of 
mingled  astonishment  and  impatience;    impatience, 


160       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION, 

that  religion  should  be  set  on  new  grounds  when 
they  had  hoped  that  religiou,  the  old  ground  having 
in  the  judgment  of  all  rational  persons  given  way, 
was  going  to  ruin  as  fast  as  could  fairly  be  expected ; 
astonishment,  that  any  man  of  liberal  tendencies 
should  not  agree  with  them. 

Particularly  striking,  in  this  respect,  were  the 
remarks  upon  Literature  and  Dogma  of  M.  Challemel- 
Lacour,  in  France,  and  of  Professor  de  Gubernatis, 
in  Italy.  Professor  de  Gubernatis  is  perhaps  the 
most  accomplished  man  in  Italy ;  he  is  certainly  one 
of  the  most  intelligent.  M.  Challemel-Lacour  is,  or 
was,  one  of  the  best,  gravest,  most  deeply  interesting 
and  instructive,  of  French  writers.  His  admirable 
series  of  articles  on  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt,  which  I 
read  a  good  many  years  ago  in  the  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes,  still  live  as  fresh  in  my  memory  as  if  I 
had  read  them  yesterday.  M.  Challemel-Lacour  has 
become  an  ardent  politician.  It  is  well  known  how 
politics,  in  France,  govern  men's  treatment  of  the 
religious  question.  Some  little  temper  and  heat  are 
excusable,  undoubtedly,  when  religion  raises  in  a 
man's  mind  simply  the  image  of  the  clerical  party 
and  of  his  sworn  political  foes.  Perhaps  a  man's 
view  of  religion,  however,  must  necessarily  in  this 
case  be  somewhat  warped.  Professor  de  Gubernatis 
is  not  a  politician;  he  is  an  independent  friend  of 
progress,  of  high  studies,  and  of  intelligence.  His 
remarks  on  Literature  and  Dogma,  therefore,  and  on 
the  attempt  made  in  that  book  to  give  a  new  life  to 
religion  by  giving  a  new  sense  to  words  of  the  Bible, 


PREFACE.  161 

have  even  a  greater  significance  than  M.  Challemel- 
Lacour's.  For  Italy  and  for  Italians,  says  Professor 
de  Gubernatis,  such  an  attempt  has  and  can  have  no 
interest  whatever.  "In  Italy  the  Bible  is  just  this  : 
— for  priests,  a  sacred  text ;  for  infidels,  a  book  full 
of  obscurities  and  contradictions ;  for  the  learned,  an 
historical  document  to  be  used  with  great  caution ; 
for  lovers  of  literature,  a  collection  of  very  fine  speci- 
mens of  Oriental  poetic  eloquence.  But  it  never  has 
been,  and  never  will  be,  a  fruitful  inspirer  of  men's 
daily  life."  "And  how  wonderful,"  Professor  de 
Gubernatis  adds,  "that  any  one  should  wish  to  make 
it  so,  and  should  raise  intellectual  and  literary  discus- 
sions having  this  for  their  object !  "  "  It  is  strange 
that  the  human  genius  should  take  pleasure  in  com- 
bating in  such  narrow  lists,  with  such  treacherous 
ground  under  one's  feet,  with  such  a  cloudy  sky  over 
one's  head ; — and  all  this  in  the  name  of  freedom  of 
discussion!"  "What  would  the  author  of  Literature 
and  Dogma  say,"  concludes  Professor  de  Gubernatis, 
"if  Plato  had  based  his  republic  upon  a  text  of 
Hesiod ; — se  Platone  avesse  fondata  la  sua  Repubblica 
sopra  un  testo  d'Esiodo  ? "  That  is  to  say,  the  Bible 
has  no  more  solidity  and  value,  as  a  basis  for  human 
life,  than  the  Theogony. 

Here  we  have,  undoubtedly,  the  genuine  opinion 
of  Continental  liberalism  concerning  the  religion  of 
the  Bible  and  its  future.  It  is  stated  with  unusual 
frankness  and  clearness,  but  it  is  the  genuine  opinion. 
It  is  not  an  opinion  which  at  present  prevails  at  all 
widely  either  in  this   country  or  in  America.     But 

VOL.  VII.  M 


162       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION. 

when  we  consider  the  immense  change  which,  in 
other  matters  where  tradition  and  convention  were 
the  obstacles  to  change,  has  befallen  the  thought  of 
this  country  since  the  Continent  was  opened  at  the 
end  of  the  great  war,  we  cannot  doubt  that  in  religion, 
too,  the  mere  barriers  of  tradition  and  convention  will 
finally  give  way,  that  a  common  European  level  of 
thought  will  establish  itself,  and  will  spread  to  America 
also.  Of  course  there  will  be  backwaters,  more  or  less 
strong,  of  superstition  and  obscurantism ;  but  I  speak 
of  the  probable  development  of  opinion  in  those 
classes  which  are  to  be  called  progressive  and  liberal. 
Such  classes  are  undoubtedly  the  multiplying  and 
prevailing  body  both  here  and  in  America.  And  I 
say  that,  if  we  judge  the  future  from  the  past,  these 
classes,  in  any  matter  where  it  is  tradition  and  con- 
vention that  at  present  isolates  them  from  the  com- 
mon liberal  opinion  of  Europe,  will,  with  time,  be 
drawn  almost  inevitably  into  that  opinion. 

The  partisans  of  traditional  religion  in  this  country 
do  not  know,  I  think,  how  decisively  the  whole  force 
of  progressive  and  liberal  opinion  on  the  Continent 
has  pronounced  against  the  Christian  religion.  They 
do  not  know  how  surely  the  whole  force  of  progressive 
and  liberal  opinion  in  this  country  tends  to  follow,  so 
far  as  traditional  religion  is  concerned,  the  opinion  of 
the  Continent.  They  dream  of  patching  up  things 
unmendable,  of  retaining  what  can  never  be  retained, 
of  stopping  change  at  a  point  where  it  can  never  be 
stopped.  The  undoubted  tendencjr  of  liberal  opinion 
is  to  reject  the  whole  anthropomorphic  and  miracu- 


PREFACE.  163 

lous  religion  of  tradition,  as  unsound  and  untenable. 
On  the  Continent  such  opinion  has  rejected  it  already. 
One  cannot  blame  the  rejection.  "  Things  are  what 
they  are,"  and  the  religion  of  tradition,  Catholic  or 
Protestant,  is  unsound  and  untenable.  A  greater 
force  of  tradition  in  favour  of  religion  is  all  which 
now  prevents  the  liberal  opinion  in  this  country  from 
following  Continental  opinion.  That  force  is  not  of 
a  nature  to  be  permanent,  and  it  will  not,  in  fact, 
hold  out  long.  But  a  very  grave  question  is  behind. 
Rejecting,  henceforth,  all  concern  with  the  obsolete 
religion  of  tradition,  the  liberalism  of  the  Continent 
rejects  also,  and  on  the  like  grounds,  all  concern  with 
the  Bible  and  Christianity.  To  claim  for  the  Bible  the 
direction,  in  any  way,  of  modern  life,  is,  we  hear,  as 
if  Plato  had  sought  to  found  his  ideal  republic  "  upon 
a  text  of  Hesiod."  The  real  question  is  whether  this 
conclusion,  too,  of  modern  liberalism  is  to  be  admitted, 
like  the  conclusion  that  traditionary  religion  is  un- 
sound and  obsolete.  And  it  does  not  find  many 
gainsayers.  Obscurantists  are  glad  to  see  the  ques- 
tion placed  on  this  footing :  that  the  cause  of  tradi- 
tionary religion,  and  the  cause  of  Christianity  in 
general,  must  stand  or  fall  together.  For  they  see 
but  very  little  way  into  the  future ;  and  in  the  imme- 
diate present  this  way  of  putting  the  question  tells, 
as  they  clearly  perceive,  in  their  favour.  In  the 
immediate  present  many  will  be  tempted  to  cling  to 
the  traditionary  religion  with  their  eyes  shut,  rather 
than  accept  the  extinction  of  Christianity.  Other 
friends  of  religion  are  busy  with  fantastic  projects, 


164       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION. 

which  can  never  come  to  anything,  but  which  prevent 
their  seeing  the  real  character  of  the  situation.  So 
the  thesis  of  modern  liberals  on  the  Continent,  that 
Christianity  in  general  stands  on  the  same  footing  as 
traditionary  religion  and  must  share  its  fate,  meets 
with  little  direct  discussion  or  opposition.  And  liberal 
opinion  everywhere  will  at  last  grow  accustomed  to 
finding  that  thesis  put  forward  as  certain,  will  become 
familiarised  with  it,  will  suppose  that  no  one  disputes 
it.  This  in  itself  will  tend  to  withhold  men  from  any 
serious  return  upon  their  own  minds  in  the  matter. 
Meanwhile  the  day  will  most  certainly  arrive,  when 
the  great  body  of  liberal  opinion  in  this  country  will 
adhere  to  the  first  half  of  the  doctrine  of  Continental 
liberals; — will  admit  that  traditionary  religion  is 
utterly  untenable.  And  the  danger  is,  that  from  the 
habits  of  their  minds,  and  from  seeing  the  thing 
treated  as  certain,  and  from  hearing  nothing  urged 
against  it,  our  liberals  may  admit  as  indisputable  the 
second  half  of  the  doctrine  too :  that  Christianity,  also, 
is  untenable. 

And  therefore  is  it  so  all-important  to  insist  on 
what  I  call  the  natural  truth  of  Christianity,  and  to 
bring  this  out  all  we  can.  Liberal  opinion  tends,  as 
we  have  seen,  to  treat  traditional  religion  and  Chris- 
tianity as  identical ;  if  one  is  unsound,  so  is  the  other. 
Especially,  however,  does  liberal  opinion  show  this 
tendency  among  the  Latin  nations,  on  whom  Protes- 
tantism did  not  lay  hold;  and  it  shows  it  most  among 
those  Latin  nations  of  whom  Protestantism  laid  hold 
least,  such  as  Italy  and  Spain.     For  Protestantism 


PKEFACE.  165 

was  undoubtedly,  whatever  may  have  been  its  faults 
and  miscarriages,  an  assertion  of  the  natural  truth  of 
Christianity  for  the  mind  and  conscience  of  men. 
The  question  is,  whether  Christianity  has  this  natural 
truth  or  not.  It  is  a  question  of  fact.  In  the  end 
the  victory  belongs  to  facts,  and  he  who  contradicts 
them  finds  that  he  runs  his  head  against  a  wall.  Our 
traditional  religion  turns  out  not  to  have,  in  fact, 
natural  truth,  the  only  truth  which  can  stand.  The 
miracles  of  our  traditional  religion,  like  other  miracles, 
did  not  happen ;  its  metaphysical  proofs  of  God  are 
mere  words.  Has  or  has  not  Christianity,  in  fact,  the 
same  want  of  natural  truth  as  our  traditional  religion1? 
It  is  a  question  of  immense  importance.  Of  questions 
about  religion,  it  may  be  said  to  be  at  the  present 
time,  for  a  serious  man,  the  only  important  one. 

Now,  whoever  seeks  to  show  the  natural  truth  of 
a  thing  which  professes  to  be  for  general  use,  ought 
to  try  to  be  as  simple  as  possible.  He  ought  not  to 
allow  himself  to  have  any  recourse  either  to  intel- 
lectual refinements  or  to  sentimental  rhetoric.  And 
therefore  it  is  well  to  start,  in  bringing  out  the  truth 
of  Christianity,  with  a  plain  proposition  such  as  every- 
body, one  would  think,  must  admit :  the  proposition 
that  conduct  is  a  very  important  matter.  I  have 
called  conduct  three-fourths  of  life.  M.  Challemel- 
Lacour  quarrels  greatly  with  the  proposition.  Cer- 
tainly people  in  general  do  not  behave  as  if  they  were 
convinced  that  conduct  is  three-fourths  of  life.  Butler 
well  says  that  even  religious  people  are  always  for 
placing  the  stress  of  their  religion  anywhere  other 


166       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUECH  AND  EELIGION. 

than  on  virtue ; — virtue  being  simply  the  good  direc- 
tion of  conduct.  We  know,  too,  that  the  Italians  at 
the  Renascence  changed  the  very  meaning  of  the  word 
virtue  altogether,  and  made  their  virtic  mean  a  love  of 
the  fine  arts  and  of  intellectual  culture.  And  we  see 
the  fruits  of  the  new  definition  in  the  Italy  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries.  We  will  not, 
then,  there  being  all  this  opposition,  offer  to  settle  the 
exact  proportion  of  life  which  conduct  may  be  said  to 
be.  But  that  conduct  is,  at  any  rate,  a  very  consider- 
able part  of  life,  will  generally  be  admitted. 

It  will  generally  be  admitted,  too,  that  all  experi- 
ence as  to  conduct  brings  us  at  last  to  the  fact  of  two 
selves,  or  instincts,  or  forces, — name  them  how  we 
will,  and  however  we  may  suppose  them  to  have 
arisen, — contending  for  the  mastery  in  man :  one,  a 
movement  of  first  impulse  and  more  involuntary, 
leading  us  to  gratify  any  inclination  that  may  solicit 
us,  and  called  generally  a  movement  of  man's  ordinary 
or  passing  self,  of  sense,  appetite,  desire ;  the  other,  a 
movement  of  reflection  and  more  voluntary,  leading 
us  to  submit  inclination  to  some  rule,  and  called 
generally  a  movement  of  man's  higher  or  enduring 
self,  of  reason,  spirit,  will.  The  thing  is  described  in 
different  words  by  different  nations  and  men  relating 
their  experience  of  it,  but  as  to  the  thing  itself  they 
all,  or  all  the  most  serious  and  important  among  them, 
agree.  This,  I  think,  will  be  admitted.  Nor  will  it 
be  denied  that  they  all  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
for  a  man  to  obey  the  higher  self,  or  reason,  or  what- 
ever it  is  to  be  called,  is  happiness  and  life  for  him ; 


PREFACE.  167 

to  obey  the  lower  is  death  and  misery.  It  will  be 
allowed,  again,  that  whatever  men's  minds  are  to 
fasten  and  rest  upon,  whatever  is  to  hold  their  atten- 
tion and  to  rule  their  practice,  naturally  embodies  it- 
self for  them  in  certain  examples,  precepts,  and  sayings, 
to  which  they  perpetually  recur.  Without  a  frame 
or  body  of  this  kind,  a  set  of  thoughts  cannot  abide 
with  men  and  sustain  them.  "If  ye  abide  in  me," 
says  Jesus,  "ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the  truth 
shall  make  you  free;" — not  if  you  keep  skipping  about 
all  over  the  world  for  various  renderings  of  it.  "  It 
behoves  us  to  know,"  says  Epictetus,  "that  a  prin- 
ciple can  hardly  establish  itself  with  a  man,  unless  he 
every  day  utters  the  same  things,  hears  the  same 
things,  and  applies  them  withal  to  his  life."  And 
naturally  the  body  of  examples  and  precepts,  which 
men  should  use  for  this  purpose,  ought  to  be  those 
which  most  impressively  represent  the  principle,  or 
the  set  of  thoughts,  commending  itself  to  their  minds 
for  respect  and  attention.  And  the  more  the  precepts 
are  used,  the  more  will  men's  sentiments  cluster  around 
them,  and  the  more  dear  and  solemn  will  they  be. 

Now  to  apply  this  to  Christianity.  It  is  evident 
that  to  what  they  called  righteousness, — a  name  which 
covers  all  that  we  mean  by  conduct, — the  Jewish 
nation  attached  pre-eminent,  unique  importance. 
This  impassioned  testimony  of  theirs  to  the  weight 
of  a  thing  admittedly  of  very  considerable  importance, 
has  its  own  value  of  a  special  kind.  But  it  is  well 
known  how  imperfectly  and  amiss  the  Jewish  nation 
conceived  righteousness.      And  finally,   when    their 


168       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION". 

misconceived  righteousness  failed  them  in  actual  life 
more  and  more,  they  took  refuge  in  imaginings  about 
the  future,  and  filled  themselves  with  hopes  of  a  king- 
dom of  God,  a  resurrection,  a  judgment,  an  eternal  life, 
bringing  in  and  establishing  for  ever  this  misconceived 
righteousness  of  theirs.  As  God's  agent  in  this  work 
of  restoring  the  kingdom  to  Israel  they  promised  to 
themselves  an  Anointed  and  Chosen  One,  Christ  the 
son  of  God.1 

Jesus  Christ  found,  when  he  came  among  his 
countrymen,  all  these  phrases  and  ideas  ruling  their 
minds.  Conduct  or  righteousness,  a  matter  admittedly 
of  very  considerable  importance,  and  which  the  Jews 
thought  of  paramount  importance,  they  had  come 
entirely  to  misconceive,  and  had  created  an  immense 
poetry  of  hopes  and  imaginings  in  favour  of  their 
misconception.  What  did  Jesus  do  1  From  his 
countrymen's  errors  about  righteousness  he  reverted 
to  the  solid,  authentic,  universal  fact  of  experience 
about  it :  the  fact  of  the  higher  and  lower  self  in 
man,  inheritors  the  one  of  them  of  happiness,  the 
other  of  misery.  He  possessed  himself  of  it,  he 
made  it  the  centre  of  his  teaching.  He  made  it  so  in 
the  well-known  formula,  his  secret :  "  He  that  will 
save  his  life  shall  lose  it ;  he  that  do  love  his  life 
shall  save  it."  And  by  his  admirable  figure  of  the 
two  lives  of  man,  the  real  life  and  the  seeming  life,  he 
connected  this  profound  fact  of  experience  with  that 
attractive  poetry  of  hopes  and  imaginings  which 
possessed  the  minds  of  his  countrymen.     Eternal  life  1 

1  John  xx.  31. 


PREFACE.  169 

Yes,  the  life  in  the  higher  and  undying  self  of  man. 
Judgment  1  Yes,  the  trying,  in  conscience,  of  the 
claims  and  instigations  of  the  two  lives,  and  the 
decision  between  them.  Eesnrrection  1  Yes,  the 
rising  from  bondage  and  transience  with  the  lower 
life  to  victory  and  permanence  with  the  higher.  The 
kingdom  of  God  1  Yes,  the  reign  amongst  mankind 
of  the  higher  life.  The  Christ  the  son  of  God  ?  Yes, 
the  bringer-in  and  founder  of  this  reign  of  the  higher 
life,  this  true  kingdom  of  God. 

But  we  can  go  farther.  Observers  say,  with  much 
appearance  of  truth,  that  all  our  passions  may  be  run 
up  into  two  elementary  instincts  :  the  reproductive 
instinct  and  the  instinct  of  self-preservation.  It  is 
evident  to  what  these  instincts  will  in  themselves 
carry  the  man  who  follows  the  lower  self  of  sense,  and 
appetite,  and  first  impulse.  It  is  evident,  also,  that 
they  are  directly  controlled  by  two  forces  which 
Christianity,  following  that  law  of  the  higher  life 
which  St.  Paul  names  indifferently  the  law  of  God,  the 
law  of  our  mind,  the  line  of  thought  of  the  spirit 1 — has 
set  up  as  its  two  grand  virtues  :  kindness  and  pure- 
ness,  charity  and  chastity.  If  any  virtues  could  stand 
for  the  whole  of  Christianity,  these  might.  Let  us 
have  them  from  the  mouth  of  Jesus  Christ  himself. 
"  He  that  loveth  his  life  shall  lose  it ;  a  new  com- 
mandment give  I  unto  you  that  ye  love  one  another." 
There  is  charity.  "  Blest  are  the  pure  in  heart,  for 
they  shall  see  God."     There  is  purity. 

We  go  here  simply  on  experience,  having  to  estab- 

1  <pooPT]/xa  rod  Trvev/xaTos. 


170       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION. 

lish  the  natural  truth  of  Christianity.  That  the  "  new 
commandment "  of  charity  is  enjoined  by  the  Bible, 
gives  it  therefore,  we  shall  suppose,  no  force  at  all, 
unless  it  turns  out  to  be  enjoined  also  by  experience. 
And  it  is  enjoined  by  experience  if  experience  shows 
that  it  is  necessary  to  human  happiness, — that  men 
cannot  get  on  without  it.  Now  really  if  there  is  a 
lesson  which  in  our  day  has  come  to  force  itself  upon 
everybody,  in  all  quarters  and  by  all  channels,  it  is 
the  lesson  of  the  solidarity,  as  it  is  called  by  modern 
philosophers,  of  men.  If  there  was  ever  a  notion 
tempting  to  common  human  nature,  it  was  the  notion 
that  the  rule  of  "  every  man  for  himself  "  was  the  rule 
of  happiness.  But  at  last  it  turns  out  as  a  matter 
of  experience,  and  so  plainly  that  it  is  coming  to  be 
even  generally  admitted, — it  turns  out  that  the  only 
real  happiness  is  in  a  kind  of  impersonal  higher  life, 
where  the  happiness  of  others  counts  with  a  man  as 
essential  to  his  own.  He  that  loves  his  life  does 
really  turn  out  to  lose  it,  and  the  new  commandment 
proves  its  own  truth  by  experience. 

And  the  other  great  Christian  virtue,  pureness  1 
Here  the  case  is  somewhat  different.  One  hears 
doubts  raised,  nowadays,  as  to  the  natural  truth  of 
this  virtue.  While  science  has  adopted,  as  a  truth  con- 
firmed by  experience,  the  Christian  idea  of  charity,  long 
supposed  to  conflict  with  experience,  and  has  decked 
it  out  with  the  grand  title  of  human  solidarity,  one 
may  hear  many  doubts  thrown,  in  the  name  of  science 
and  reason,  on  the  truth  and  validity  of  the  Christian 
idea  of  pureness.     As  a  mere  commandment  this  virtue 


PEEFACE.  171 

cannot  have  the  authority  which  it  once  had,  for  the 
notion  of  commandments  in  this  sense  is  giving  way. 
And  on  its  natural  truth,  when  the  thing  conies  to  be 
tested  by  experience,  doubts  are  thrown.  "Well,  ex- 
perience must  decide.  It  is  a  question  of  fact. 
"  There  is  no  honest  woman  who  is  not  sick  of  her 
trade,"  says  La  Rochefoucauld.  "  I  pass  for  having 
enjoyed  life,"  said  Ninon  in  old  age,  "  but  if  any  one 
had  told  me  beforehand  what  my  life  was  going  to 
be  I  would  have  hanged  myself."  Who  is  right  1 
On  which  side  is  natural  truth  ?  It  will  be  admitted 
that  there  can  hardly  be  a  more  vital  question  for 
human  society.  And  those  who  doubt  on  which  side 
is  natural  truth,  and  who  raise  the  question,  will  have 
to  learn  by  experience.  But  finely  touched  souls 
have  a  presentiment  of  a  thing's  natural  truth  even 
though  it  be  questioned,  and  long  before  the  palpable 
proof  by  experience  convinces  all  the  world.  They 
have  it  quite  independently  of  their  attitude  towards 
traditional  religion.  "  May  the  idea  of  pureness,  ex- 
tending itself  to  the  very  morsel  which  I  take  into 
my  mouth,  grow  ever  clearer  in  me  and  clearer  !  " * 
So  prayed  Goethe.  And  all  such  well-inspired  souls 
will  perceive  the  profound  natural  truth  of  the  idea 
of  pureness,  and  will  be  sure  therefore,  that  the  more 
boldly  it  is  challenged,  the  more  sharply  and  signally 
will  experience  mark  its  truth.  So  that  of  the  two 
great  Christian  virtues,  charity  and  chastity,  kindness 
and  pureness,  the  one  has  at  this  moment  the  most 

1   "  Moge  die  Idee  des  Reinen,  die  sicli  auf  den  Bissen  erstreckt 
den  icli  in  den  Mund  nehine,  immer  lichter  in  mir  werden  ! " 


172       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION. 

signal  testimony  from  experience  to  its  intrinsic  truth 
and  weight,  and  the  other  is  expecting  it. 

All  this  may  enable  us  to  understand  how  admir- 
ably fitted  are  Jesus  Christ  and  his  precepts  to  serve 
as  mankind's  standing  reminder  as  to  conduct, — to 
serve  as  men's  religion.  Jesus  Christ  and  his  precepts 
are  found  to  hit  the  moral  experience  of  mankind,  to 
hit  it  in  the  critical  points,  to  hit  it  lastingly ;  and, 
when  doubts  are  thrown  upon  their  really  hitting  it, 
then  to  come  out  stronger  than  ever.  And  we  know 
how  Jesus  Christ  and  his  precepts  won  their  way 
from  the  very  first,  and  soon  became  the  religion  of 
all  that  part  of  the  world  which  most  counted,  and 
are  now  the  religion  of  all  that  part  of  the  world 
which  most  counts.  This  they  certainly  in  great  part 
owed,  even  from  the  first,  to  that  instinctive  sense  of 
their  natural  fitness  for  such  a  service,  of  their  natural 
truth  and  weight,  which  amidst  all  misapprehensions 
of  them  they  inspired. 

Moreover,  we  must  always  keep  in  sight  one 
specially  important  element  in  the  power  exercised 
by  Jesus  Christ  and  his  precepts.  And  that  is,  the 
impression  left  by  Jesus  of  what  we  call  sweet  reason 
in  the  highest  degree ;  of  consummate  justness  in 
what  he  said,  perfect  balance,  unerring  felicity.  For 
this  impression  has  been  a  great  element  of  progress. 
It  made  half  the  charm  of  the  religion  of  Jesus  in  the 
first  instance,  and  it  makes  it  still.  But  it  also  serves 
in  an  admirable  way  against  the  misapprehensions 
with  which  men  received,  as  we  have  said,  and  could 
not  but  receive,  the  natural  truth  he  gave  them,  and 


PREFACE.  173 

which  they  made  up  along  with  that  truth  into  their 
religion.  For  it  is  felt  that  anything  exaggerated, 
distorted,  false,  cannot  be  from  Jesus  •  that  it  must 
be  human  perversion  of  him.  There  is  always  an 
appeal  open,  and  a  return  possible,  to  the  acknowledged 
sweet  reason  of  Jesus,  to  his  "  grace  and  truth."  And 
thus  Christians,  instead  of  sticking  for  ever  because 
of  their  religion  to  errors  which  they  themselves  have 
put  into  their  religion,  find  in  their  religion  itself  a 
ground  for  breaking  with  them.  For  example  :  medi- 
eval charity  and  medieval  chastity  are  manifestly 
misgrowths,  however  natural, — misgrowths  unwork- 
able and  dangerous, — of  the  ideas  of  kindness  and 
pureness.  Then  they  cannot  have  come  from  Jesus  ; 
they  cannot  be  what  Jesus  meant.  Such  is  the  inevit- 
able inference  ;  and  Christianity  here  touches  a  spring 
for  self -correction  and  self -readjustment  which  is  of 
the  highest  value. 

And,  finally,  the  figure  and  sayings  of  Jesus,  em- 
bodying and  representing  men's  moral  experience  to 
them,  serving  them  as  a  perpetual  reminder  of  it, 
by  a  fixed  form  of  words  and  observances  holding 
their  attention  to  it,  and  thus  attaching  them,  have 
attracted  to  themselves,  by  the  very  force  of  time, 
and  use,  and  association,  a  mass  of  additional  attach- 
ment, and  a  host  of  sentiments  the  most  tender  and 
profound. 

This,  then,  is  what  we  mean  by  saying  that  Chris- 
tianity has  natural  truth.  By  this  truth  things  must 
stand,  not  by  people's  wishes  and  asseverations  about 
them.      Omnium  Deus  est,  cujus,  velimus  aut  nolimiis, 


174       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION. 

ornnes  stimus,  says  Tertullian.  "The  God  of  all  of 
us  is  the  God  that  we  all  belong  to  whether  we  will 
or  no."  The  Eternal  that  makes  for  righteousness 
is  such  a  God ;  and  he  is  the  God  of  Christianity. 
Jesus  explains  what  this  God  would  have  of  us ;  and 
the  strength  of  Jesus  is  that  he  explains  it  right. 
The  natural  experimental  truth  of  his  explanations  is 
their  one  claim  upon  us ;  but  this  is  claim  enough. 
Does  the  thing,  being  admittedly  most  important, 
turn  out  to  be  as  he  says?  If  it  does,  then  we 
"  belong  to  him  whether  we  will  or  no." 

A  recent  German  writer,  wishing  to  exhalt  Scho- 
penhauer at  the  expense  of  Jesus,  says  that  both 
Jesus  and  Schopenhauer  taught  the  true  doctrine  of 
self-renouncement,  but  that  Schopenhauer  faced  the 
pessimism  which  is  that  doctrine's  natural  accompani- 
ment, whereas  Jesus  sought  to  escape  from  it  by  the 
dream  of  a  paradise  to  come.  This  critic  credits 
Jesus,  as  usual,  with  the  very  misconceptions  against 
which  he  strove.  It  was  the  effort  of  Jesus  to  place 
the  bliss,  the  eternal  life  of  popular  religion,  not 
where  popular  religion  placed  it,  in  a  fantastic  para- 
dise to  come,  but  in  the  joy  of  self -renouncement. 
This  was  the  "  eternal  life  "  of  Jesus ;  this  was  his 
"joy;  " — the  joy  which  he  desired  that  his  disciples, 
too,  might  have  full  and  complete,  might  have  "  ful- 
filled in  themselves."  His  depth,  his  truth,  his  Tight- 
ness, come  out  in  this  very  point ;  that  he  saw  that 
self -renouncement  is  joy,  and  that  human  life,  in 
which  it  takes  place,  is  therefore  a  blessing  and  a 
benefit.     And  just  exactly  here  is  his  superiority  to 


PREFACE.  175 

Schopenhauer.  Jesus  hits  the  plain  natural  truth 
that  human  life  is  a  blessing  and  a  benefit,  while 
Schopenhauer  misses  it.  "  It  is  evident,  even  a 
priori,  that  the  world  is  doomed  to  evil,  and  that  it 
is  the  domain  of  irrationality.  In  abstinence  from 
the  further  propagation  of  mankind  is  salvation. 
This  would  gradually  bring  about  the  extinction  of 
our  species,  and,  with  our  extinction,  that  of  the 
universe,  since  the  universe  requires  for  its  existence 
the  co-operation  of  human  thought."  The  fault  of 
this  sort  of  thing  is,  that  it  is  plainly,  somehow  or 
other,  a  paradox,  and  that  human  thought  (I  say  it 
with  due  deference  to  the  many  persons  for  whom 
Schopenhauer  is  just  now  in  fashion)  instinctively 
feels  it  to  be  absurd.  The  fact  is  with  Jesus.  "  The 
Eternal  is  king,  the  earth  may  be  glad  thereof." 
Human  life  is  a  blessing  and  a  benefit,  and  constantly 
improvable,  because  in  self-renouncement  is  a  fount 
of  joy,  "springing  up  unto  everlasting  life."  Not 
only,  "  It  is  more  right  to  give  than  to  receive,"  more 
rational,  more  necessary ;  but,  "  It  is  more  Messed 
to  give  than  to  receive." 

The  fad,  I  say,  the  real  fact,  is  what  it  imports  us 
to  reach.  A  writer  of  remarkable  knowledge,  judg- 
ment, and  impartiality,  M.  Maurice  Vernes,  of  the 
Revue  Scientifique,  objects  to  the  contrast  of  an  earlier 
intuition  of  Israel,  Righteousness  tendeth  to  life,  the 
righteous  is  an  everlasting  foundation,  with  a  later 
"  Aberglaube,"  such  as  we  find  in  the  Book  of  Daniel, 
and  such  as  Jesus  had  to  deal  with.  He  objects  to 
the  contrast  of  the  doctrine  of  Jesus  with  the  meta- 


176       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION. 

physics  of  the  Church.  M.  Maurice  Vernes  is  one  of 
those,  of  whom  there  are  so  many,  who  have  a 
philosophical  system  of  history, — a  history  ruled  by 
the  law  of  progress,  of  evolution.  Between  the 
eighth  century  before  our  era  and  the  second,  the 
law  of  evolution  must  have  been  at  work.  Progress 
must  have  gone  on.  Therefore  the  Messianic  ideas 
of  the  Book  of  Daniel  must  be  a  higher  stage  than 
the  ideas  of  the  great  prophets  and  wise  men  of  the 
eighth  and  ninth  centuries.  Again.  The  importa- 
tion of  metaphysics  into  Christianity  means  the 
arrival  of  Greek  thought,  Western  thought, — the 
enrichment  of  the  early  Christian  thought  with  new 
elements.  This  is  evolution,  development.  And 
therefore,  apparently,  the  Athanasian  Creed  must  be 
a  higher  stage  than  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 

Let  us  salute  with  respect  that  imposing  generality, 
the  law  of  evolution.  But  let  us  remember  that,  in 
each  particular  case  which  comes  before  us,  what 
concerns  us  is,  surely,  the  fact  as  to  that  particular 
case.  And  surely,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  ideas  of 
the  great  prophets  and  wise  men  of  the  eighth  or 
ninth  century  before  Christ  are  profounder  and  more 
true  than  the  ideas  of  the  eschatologist  of  the  Book  of 
Daniel.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  again,  the  ideas  of  Jesus 
in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  are  surely  profounder 
and  more  true  than  the  ideas  of  the  theologian  of 
the  Athanasian  Creed.  Ins  and  outs  of  this  kind  may 
settle  their  business  with  the  general  law  of  evolution 
as  they  can ;  but  our  business  is  with  the  fact.  And 
the  fact,  surely,  is  here  as  we  have  stated  it. 


PKEFACE.  177 

M.  Vernes  further  objects  to  our  picking  and 
choosing  among  the  records  of  Jesus,  and  pronouncing 
that  whatever  suits  us  shall  be  held  to  come  from 
Jesus,  and  whatever  does  not  suit  us  from  his 
reporters.  But  here,  again,  it  is  a  question  of  fact ; 
— a  question,  which  of  two  things  is,  in  fact,  more 
likely  1  It  is,  in  fact,  more  likely  that  Jesus,  being 
what  we  can  see  from  certain  of  the  data  about  him 
that  he  was,  should  have  been  in  many  points  mis- 
understood and  misrepresented  by  his  followers ;  or 
that,  being  what  by  those  data  he  was,  he  should 
also  have  been  at  the  same  time  the  thaumaturgical 
personage  that  his  followers  imagined1?  The  more 
reasonable  Jesus  is  likewise,  surely,  the  more  real 
one. 

I  believe,  then,  that  the  real  God,  the  real  Jesus, 
will  continue  to  command  allegiance,  because  we  do, 
in  fact,  "belong  to  them."  I  believe  that  Christi- 
anity will  survive  because  of  its  natural  truth.  Those 
who  fancied  that  they  had  done  with  it,  those  who 
had  thrown  it  aside  because  what  was  presented  to 
them  under  its  name  was  so  unreceivable,  will  have 
to  return  to  it  again,  and  to  learn  it  better.  The 
Latin  nations, — even  the  southern  Latin  nations, — 
will  have  to  acquaint  themselves  with  that  funda- 
mental document  of  Christianity,  the  Bible,  and  to 
discover  wherein  it  differs  from  "a  text  of  Hesiod." 
Neither  will  the  old  forms  of  Christian  worship  be 
extinguished  by  the  growth  of  a  truer  conception  of 
their  essential  contents.  Those  forms,  thrown  out 
at  dimly -grasped  truth,  approximative  and  provisional 

VOL.  VII.  N 


178       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION. 

representations  of  it,  and  which  are  now  surrounded 
with  such  an  atmosphere  of  tender  and  profound 
sentiment,  will  not  disappear.  They  will  survive  as 
poetry.  Above  all,  among  the  Catholic  nations  will 
this  be  the  case.  And,  indeed,  one  must  wonder  at 
the  fatuity  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  that  she 
should  not  herself  see  what  a  future  there  is  for  her 
here.  Will  there  never  arise  among  Catholics  some 
great  soul,  to  perceive  that  the  eternity  and  univer- 
sality, which  is  vainly  claimed  for  Catholic  dogma 
and  the  ultramontane  system,  might  really  be  possible 
for  Catholic  worship  ?  But  to  rule  over  the  moment 
and  the  credulous  has  more  attraction  than  to  work 
for  the  future  and  the  sane. 

Christianity,  however,  will  find  the  ways  for  its 
own  future.  What  is  certain  is  that  it  will  not  dis- 
appear. Whatever  progress  may  be  made  in  science, 
art,  and  literary  culture, — however  much  higher, 
more  general,  and  more  effective  than  at  present  the 
value  for  them  may  become, — Christianity  will  be 
still  there  as  what  these  rest  against  and  imply ;  as 
the  indispensable  background,  the  three-fourths  of  life. 
It  is  true,  while  the  remaining  fourth  is  ill-cared  for, 
the  three-fourths  themselves  must  also  suffer  with  it. 
But  this  does  but  bring  us  to  the  old  and  true 
Socratic  thesis  of  the  interdependence  of  virtue  and 
knowledge.  And  we  cannot,  then,  do  better  than 
conclude  with  some  excellent  words  of  Mr.  Jowett, 
doing  homage,  in  the  preface  introducing  his  trans- 
lation of  Plato's  Protagoras,  to  that  famous  thesis. 
"This  is  an  aspect  of  the  truth  which  was  lost  almost 


PREFACE.  179 

as  soon  as  it  was  found ;  and  yet  has  to  be  recovered 
by  every  one  for  himself  who  would  pass  the  limits  of 
proverbial  and  popular  philosophy.  The  moral  and 
intellectual  are  always  dividing,  yet  they  must  be 
reunited,  and  in  the  highest  conception  of  them  are 
inseparable." 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

I.  A  Psychological  Parallel        .  .  .183 

II.  Bishop  Butler  and  the  Zeit-Geist  .  .         235 

III.  The  Church  of  England  .  .  .         309 

IV.  A  Last  Word  on  the  Burials  Bill  .  .         344 


I. 


A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PAEALLEL. 

"Whoever  has  to  impugn  the  soundness  of  popular 
theology  will  most  certainly  find  parts  in  his  task 
which  are  unwelcome  and  painful.  Other  parts  in  it, 
however,  are  full  of  reward.  And  none  more  so  than 
those,  in  which  the  work  to  be  done  is  positive,  not 
negative,  and  uniting,  not  dividing;  in  which  what 
survives  in  Christianity  is  dwelt  upon,  not  what 
perishes ;  and  what  offers  us  points  of  contact  with 
the  religion  of  the  community,  rather  than  motives 
for  breaking  with  it.  Popular  religion  is  too  forward 
to  employ  arguments  which  may  well  be  called  argu- 
ments of  despair.  "  Take  me  in  the  lump,"  it  cries, 
"  or  give  up  Christianity  altogether.  Construe  the 
Bible  as  I  do,  or  renounce  my  public  worship  and 
solemnities ;  renounce  all  communion  with  me,  as  an 
imposture  and  falsehood  on  your  part.  Quit,  as 
weak-minded,  deluded  blunderers,  all  those  doctors 
and  lights  of  the  Church  who  have  long  served  you, 
aided  you,  been  dear  to  you.  Those  teachers  set 
forth  what  are,  in  your  opinion,  errors,  and  go  on 


184       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

grounds  which  you  believe  to  be  hollow.  Whoever 
thinks  as  you  do,  ought,  if  he  is  courageous  and  con- 
sistent, to  trust  such  blind  guides  no  more,  but  to 
remain  staunch  by  his  new  lights  and  himself." 

It  happens,  I  suppose,  to  most  people  who  treat 
an  interesting  subject,  and  it  happens  to  me,  to  receive 
from  those  whom  the  subject  interests,  and  who  may 
have  in  general  followed  one's  treatment  of  it  with 
sympathy,  avowals  of  difficulty  upon  certain  points, 
requests  for  explanation.  But  the  discussion  of  a 
subject,  more  especially  of  a  religious  subject,  may 
easily  be  pursued  longer  than  is  advisable.  On  the 
immense  difference  which  there  seems  to  me  to  be 
between  the  popular  conception  of  Christianity  and 
the  true  conception  of  it,  I  have  said  what  I  wished  to 
say.  I  wished  to  say  it,  partly  in  order  to  aid  those 
whom  the  popular  conception  embarrassed ;  partly 
because,  having  frequently  occasion  to  assert  the 
truth  and  importance  of  Christianity  against  those 
who  disparaged  them,  I  was  bound  in  honesty  to 
make  clear  what  sort  of  Christianity  I  meant.  But 
having  said,  however  imperfectly,  what  I  wished,  I 
leave,  and  am  glad  to  leave,  a  discussion  where  the 
hope  to  do  good  must  always  be  mixed  with  an 
apprehension  of  doing  harm.  Only,  in  leaving  it,  I 
will  conclude  with  what  cannot,  one  may  hope,  do 
harm  :  an  endeavour  to  dispel  some  difficulties  raised 
by  the  arguments  of  despair,  as  I  have  called  them,  of 
popular  religion. 

I  have  formerly  spoken  at  much  length  of  the  writ- 
ings of  St.  Paul,  pointing  out  what  a  clue  he  gives  us 


I.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  185 

to  the  right  understanding  of  the  word  resurrection, 
the  great  word  of  Christianity  ;  and  how  he  deserves, 
on  this  account,  our  special  interest  and  study.  It  is 
the  spiritual  resurrection  of  which  he  is  thus  the  in- 
structive expounder  to  us.  But  undoubtedly  he 
believed  also  in  the  miracle  of  the  physical  resurrec- 
tion, both  of  Jesus  himself  and  for  mankind  at  large. 
This  belief  those  who  do  not  admit  the  miraculous 
will  not  share  with  him.  And  one  who  does  not 
admit  the  miraculous,  but  who  yet  had  continued 
to  think  St.  Paul  worthy  of  all  honour  and  his  teach- 
ing full  of  instruction,  brings  forward  to  me  a 
sentence  from  an  eloquent  and  most  popular  author, 
wherein  it  is  said  that  "St.  Paul — surely  no  imbecile 
or  credulous  enthusiast — vouches  for  the  reality  of 
the  (physical)  resurrection,  of  the  appearances  of  Jesus 
after  it,  and  of  his  own  vision."  Must  then  St.  Paul, 
he  asks,  if  he  was  mistaken  in  thus  vouching, — which 
whoever  does  not  admit  the  miraculous  cannot  but 
suppose, — of  necessity  be  an  "imbecile  and  credulous 
enthusiast,"  and  his  words  and  character  of  no  more 
value  to  us  than  those  of  that  slight  sort  of  people  ? 
And  again,  my  questioner  finds  the  same  author  .say- 
ing, that  to  suppose  St.  Paul  and  the  Evangelists 
mistaken  about  the  miracles  which  they  allege,  is 
to  "  insinuate  that  the  faith  of  Christendom  was 
founded  on  most  facile  and  reprehensible  credulity, 
and  this  in  men  who  have  taught  the  spirit  of  truth- 
fulness as  a  primary  duty  of  the  religion  which  they 
preached."  And  he  inquires  whether  St.  Paul  and 
the  Evangelists,  in  admitting  the  miraculous,  were 


186       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

really  founding  the  faith  of  Christendom  on  most 
facile  and  reprehensible  credulity,  and  were  false  to 
the  spirit  of  truthfulness  taught  by  themselves  as  the 
primary  duty  of  the  religion  which  they  preached. 

Let  me  answer  by  putting  a  parallel  case.  The 
argument  is  that  St.  Paul,  by  believing  and  asserting 
the  reality  of  the  physical  resurrection  and  subsequent 
appearances  of  Jesus,  proves  himself,  supposing  those 
alleged  facts  not  to  have  happened,  an  imbecile  or 
credulous  enthusiast,  and  an  unprofitable  guide.  St. 
Paul's  vision  we  need  not  take  into  account,  because 
even  those  who  do  not  admit  the  miraculous  will 
readily  admit  that  he  had  his  vision,  only  they  say  it 
is  to  be  explained  naturally.  But  they  do  not  admit 
the  reality  of  the  physical  resurrection  of  Jesus  and 
of  his  appearances  afterwards,  while  yet  they  must 
own  that  St.  Paul  did.  The  question  is,  does  either 
the  belief  of  these  things  by  a  man  of  signal  truthful- 
ness, judgment,  and  mental  power  in  St.  Paul's 
circumstances,  prove  them  to  have  really  happened  ; 
or  does  his  believing  them,  in  spite  of  their  not  having 
really  happened,  prove  that  he  cannot  have  been  a 
man  of  great  truthfulness,  judgment,  and  mental 
power  1 

Undeniably  St.  Paul  was  mistaken  about  the  im- 
minence of  the  end  of  the  world.  But  this  was  a 
matter  of  expectation,  not  experience.  If  he  was 
mistaken  about  a  grave  fact  alleged  to  have  already 
positively  happened,  such  as  the  bodily  resurrection 
of  Jesus,  he  must,  it  is  argued,  have  been  a  credulous 
and  imbecile  enthusiast. 


I.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  187 

II. 

I  have  already  mentioned  elsewhere l  Sir  Matthew 
Hale's  belief  in  the  reality  of  witchcraft.  The  con- 
temporary records  of  this  belief  in  our  own  country 
and  among  our  own  people,  in  a  century  of  great 
intellectual  force  and  achievement,  and  when  the 
printing  press  fixed  and  preserved  the  accounts  of 
public  proceedings  to  which  the  charge  of  witchcraft 
gave  rise,  are  of  extraordinary  interest.  They  throw 
an  invaluable  light  for  us  on  the  history  of  the  human 
spirit.  I  think  it  is  not  an  illusion  of  national  self- 
esteem  to  flatter  ourselves  that  something  of  the  Eng- 
lish "good  nature  and  good  humour"  is  not  absent 
even  from  these  repulsive  records ;  that  from  the 
traits  of  infuriated,  infernal  cruelty  which  characterise 
similar  records  elsewhere,  particularly  among  the  Latin 
nations,  they  are  in  a  great  measure  free.  They  reveal, 
too,  beginnings  of  that  revolt  of  good  sense,  gleams  of 
that  reason,  that  criticism,  which  was  presently  to 
disperse  the  long-prevailing  belief  in  witchcraft.  At 
the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  Addison, 
though  he  himself  looks  with  disfavour  on  a  man  who 
wholly  disbelieves  in  ghosts  and  apparitions,  yet 
smiles  at  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley's  belief  in  witches,  as 
a  belief  which  intelligent  men  had  outgrown,  a  sur- 
vival from  times  of  ignorance.  Nevertheless,  in  1716, 
two  women  were  hanged  at  Huntingdon  for  witchcraft. 
But  they  were  the  last  victims,  and  in  1736  the  penal 
statutes  against  witchcraft  were  repealed.     And  by 

1  God  and  the  Bible,  p.  337. 


188       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  majority  of 
rational  people  had  come  to  disbelieve,  not  in  witches 
only,  but  in  ghosts  also.  Incredulity  had  become  the 
rule,  credulity  the  exception. 

But  through  the  greater  part  of  the  seventeenth 
century  things  were  just  the  other  way.  Credulity 
about  witchcraft  was  the  rule,  incredulity  the  excep- 
tion. It  is  by  its  all-pervadingness,  its  seemingly  in- 
evitable and  natural  character,  that  this  credulity  of 
the  seventeenth  century  is  distinguished  from  modern 
growths  which  are  sometimes  compared  with  it.  In 
the  addiction  to  what  is  called  spiritualism,  there  is 
something  factitious  and  artificial.  It  is  quite  easy 
to  pay  no  attention  to  spiritualists  and  their  exhibi- 
tions ;  and  a  man  of  serious  temper,  a  man  even  of 
matured  sense,  will  in  general  pay  none.  He  will 
instinctively  apply  Goethe's  excellent  caution :  that 
we  have  all  of  us  a  nervous  system  which  can  easily 
be  worked  upon,  that  we  are  most  of  us  very  easily 
puzzled,  and  that  it  is  foolish,  by  idly  perplexing  our 
understanding  and  playing  with  our  nervous  system, 
to  titillate  in  ourselves  the  fibre  of  superstition.  Who- 
ever runs  after  our  modern  sorcerers  may  indeed  find 
them.  He  may  make  acquaintance  with  their  new 
spiritual  visitants  who  have  succeeded  to  the  old- 
fashioned  imps  of  the  seventeenth  century, — to  the 
Jarmara,  Elemauzer,  Sack  and  Sugar,  Vinegar  Tom, 
and  Grizzel  Greedigut,  of  our  trials  for  witchcraft. 
But  he  may  also  pass  his  life  without  troubling  his 
head  about  them  and  their  masters.  In  the  seven- 
teenth  century,   on   the   other  hand,   the   belief  in 


i.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  189 

witches  and  their  works  met  a  man  at  every  turn, 
and  created  an  atmosphere  for  his  thoughts  which 
they  could  not  help  feeling.  A  man  who  scouted  the 
belief,  who  even  disparaged  it,  was  called  Sadducee, 
atheist,  and  infidel.  Eelations  of  the  conviction  of 
witches  had  their  sharp  word  of  "  condemnation  for 
the  particular  opinion  of  some  men  who  suppose  there 
be  none  at  all."  They  had  their  caution  to  him  "  to 
take  heed  how  he  either  despised  the  power  of  God 
in  his  creatures,  or  vilipended  the  subtlety  and  fury 
of  the  Devil  as  God's  minister  of  vengeance."  The 
ministers  of  religion  took  a  leading  part  in  the  pro- 
ceedings against  witches ;  the  Puritan  ministers  were 
here  particularly  busy.  Scripture  had  said  :  Thou 
shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to  live.  And,  strange  to  say, 
the  poor  creatures  tried  and  executed  for  witchcraft 
appear  to  have  usually  been  themselves  firm  believers 
in  their  own  magic.  They  confess  their  compact  with 
the  Devil,  and  specify  the  imps,  or  familiars,  whom 
they  have  at  their  disposal.  All  this,  I  say,  created 
for  the  mind  an  atmosphere  from  which  it  was  hard 
to  escape.  Again  and  again  we  hear  of  the  "  suffi- 
cient justices  of  the  peace  and  discreet  magistrates," 
of  the  "  persons  of  great  knowledge,"  who  were  satis- 
fied with  the  proofs  of  witchcraft  offered  to  them. 
It  is  abundantly  clear  that  to  take  as  solid  and  con- 
vincing, where  a  witch  was  in  question,  evidence 
which  would  now  be  accepted  by  no  reasonable  man, 
was  in  the  seventeenth  century  quite  compatible  with 
truthfulness  of  disposition,  vigour  of  intelligence,  and 
penetrating  judgment  on  other  matters. 


190       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUECH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

Certainly  these  three  advantages, — truthfulness  of 
disposition,  vigour  of  intelligence,  and  penetrating 
judgment, — were  possessed  in  a  signal  degree  by  the 
famous  Chief  Justice  of  Charles  the  Second's  reign, 
Sir  Matthew  Hale.  Burnet  notices  the  remarkable 
mixture  in  him  of  sweetness  with  gravity,  so  to  the 
three  fore-named  advantages  we  may  add  gentleness 
of  temper.  There  is  extant  the  report  of  a  famous 
trial  for  witchcraft  before  Sir  Matthew  Hale.1  Two 
widows  of  Lowestoft  in  Suffolk,  named  Rose  Cullen- 
der and  Amy  Duny,  were  tried  before  him  at  Bury 
St.  Edmunds,  at  the  Spring  Assizes  in  1664,  as  witches. 
The  report  was  taken  in  Court  during  the  trial,  but 
was  not  published  till  eighteen  years  afterwards,  in 
1682.  Every  decade,  at  that  time,  saw  a  progressive 
decline  in  the  belief  in  witchcraft.  The  person  who 
published  the  report  was,  however,  a  believer;  and  he 
considered,  he  tells  us,  that  "so  exact  a  relation  of 
this  trial  would  probably  give  more  satisfaction  to  a 
great  many  persons,  by  reason  that  it  is  pure  matter 
of  fact,  and  that  evidently  demonstrated,  than  the 
arguments  and  reasons  of  other  very  learned  men  that 
probably  may  not  be  so  intelligible  to  all  readers ; 
especially,  this  being  held  before  a  judge  whom  for 
his  integrity,  learning,  and  law,  hardly  any  age  either 
before  or  since  could  parallel ;  who  not  only  took  a 
great  deal  of  pains  and  spent  much  time  in  this  trial 
himself,  but  had  the  assistance  and  opinion  of  several 
other  very  eminent  and  learned  persons."     One  of 

1  Reprinted  in  A  Collection  of  Rare  and  Curious  Tracts  relat- 
ing to  Witchcraft.     London  1838. 


I.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  191 

these  persons  was  Sir  Thomas  Browne  of  Norwich, 
the  author  of  the  Beligio  Medici  and  of  the  book  on 
Vulgar  Errors. 

The  relation  of  the  trial  of  Rose  Cullender  and 
Amy  Duny  is  indeed  most  interesting  and  most 
instructive,  because  it  shows  us  so  clearly  how  to  live 
in  a  certain  atmosphere  of  belief  will  govern  men's 
conclusions  from  what  they  see  and  hear.  To  us  who 
do  not  believe  in  witches,  the  evidence  on  which  Rose 
Cullender  and  Amy  Duny  were  convicted  carries  its 
own  natural  explanation  with  it,  and  itself  dispels  the 
charge  against  them.  They  were  accused  of  having 
bewitched  a  number  of  children,  causing  them  to  have 
fits,  and  to  bring  up  pins  and  nails.  Several  of  the 
witnesses  were  poor  ignorant  people.  The  weighty 
evidence  in  the  case  was  that  of  Samuel  Pacy,  a  mer- 
chant of  Lowestoft,  two  of  whose  children,  Elizabeth 
and  Deborah,  of  the  ages  of  eleven  and  nine,  were 
said  to  have  been  bewitched.  The  younger  child  was 
too  ill  to  be  brought  to  the  Assizes,  but  the  elder  was 
produced  in  Court.  Samuel  Pacy,  their  father,  is 
described  as  "  a  man  who  carried  himself  with  much 
soberness  during  the  trial,  from  whom  proceeded  no 
words  either  of  passion  or  malice,  though  his  children 
were  so  greatly  afflicted."  He  deposed  that  his 
younger  daughter,  being  lame  and  "without  power  in 
her  limbs,  had  on  a  sunshiny  day  in  October  "  desired 
to  be  carried  on  the  east  part  of  the  house  to  be  set 
upon  the  bank  which  looketh  upon  the  sea."  While 
she  sat  there,  Amy  Duny,  who  as  well  as  the  other 
prisoner  is  shown  by  the  evidence  to  have  been  by 


192       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

her  neighbours  commonly  reputed  a  witch,  came  to 
the  house  to  get  some  herrings.  She  was  refused, 
and  went  away  grumbling.  At  the  same  moment  the 
child  was  seized  with  violent  fits.  The  doctor  who 
attended  her  could  not  explain  them.  So  ten  days 
afterwards  her  father,  according  to  his  own  deposition, 
"  by  reason  of  the  circumstances  aforesaid,  and  in 
regard  Amy  Duny  is  a  woman  of  an  ill  fame  and 
commonly  reported  to  be  a  witch  and  a  sorceress, 
and  for  that  the  said  child  in  her  fits  would  cry  out 
of  Amy  Duny  as  the  cause  of  her  malady,  and  that 
she  did  affright  her  with  apparitions  of  her  person,  as 
the  child  in  the  interval  of  her  fits  related,  did  suspect 
the  said  Amy  Duny  for  a  witch,  and  charged  her  with 
the  injury  and  wrong  to  his  child,  and  caused  her  to 
be  set  in  the  stocks."  While  she  was  there,  two 
women  asked  her  the  reason  of  the  illness  of  Mr. 
Pacy's  child.  She  answered  :  "  Mr.  Pacy  keeps  a 
great  stir  about  his  child,  but  let  him  stay  until  he 
hath  done  as  much  by  his  children  as  I  have  done  by 
mine."  Being  asked  what  she  had  done  to  hers,  she 
replied  that  "  she  had  been  fain  to  open  her  child's 
mouth  with  a  tap  to  give  it  victuals."  Two  days 
afterwards  Pacy's  elder  daughter,  Elizabeth,  was 
seized  with  fits  like  her  sister's  ;  "  insomuch  that  they 
could  not  open  her  mouth  to  preserve  her  life  without 
the  help  of  a  tap  which  they  were  obliged  to  use." 
The  children  in  their  fits  would  cry  out :  "  There 
stands  Amy  Duny  "  or  "  Eose  Cullender  "  (another 
reputed  witch  of  Lowestoft) ;  and,  when  the  fits  were 
over,  would  relate  how  they  had  seen  Amy  Duny 


i.]         A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.        193 

and  Rose  Cullender  shaking  their  fists  at  them  and 
threatening  them.  They  said  that  bees  or  flies 
carried  into  their  mouths  the  pins  and  nails  which 
they  brought  up  in  their  fits.  During  their  illness 
their  father  sometimes  made  them  read  aloud  from 
the  New  Testament.  He  "  observed  that  they  would 
read  till  they  came  to  the  name  of  Lord,  or  Jesus,  or 
Christ,  and  then  before  they  could  pronounce  either 
of  the  said  words  they  would  suddenly  fall  into  their 
fits.  But  when  they  came  to  the  name  of  Satan  or 
Devil  they  would  clap  their  fingers  upon  the  book, 
crying  out :  '  This  bites,  but  makes  me  speak  right 
well.' "  And  when  their  father  asked  them  why  they 
could  not  pronounce  the  words  Lord,  or  Jesus,  or  Christ, 
they  answered  :  "  Amy  Duny  saith,  I  must  not  use 
that  name." 

It  seems  almost  an  impertinence  nowadays  to  sup- 
pose, that  any  one  can  require  telling  how  self- 
explanatory  all  this  is,  without  recourse  to  witchcraft 
and  magic.  These  poor  rickety  children,  full  of 
disease  and  with  morbid  tricks,  have  their  imagina- 
tion possessed  by  the  two  famed  and  dreaded  witches 
of  their  native  place,  of  whose  prowess  they  have 
heard  tale  after  tale,  whom  they  have  often  seen  with 
their  own  eyes,  whose  presence  has  startled  one  of 
them  in  her  hour  of  suffering,  and  round  whom  all 
those  ideas  of  diabolical  agency,  in  which  they  have 
been  nursed,  converge  and  cluster.  The  speech  of 
the  accused  witch  in  the  stocks  is  the  most  natural 
speech  possible,  and  the  fulfilment  which  her  words 
received  in  the  course  of  Elizabeth  Pacy's  fits  is  per- 

VOL.  VII.  0 


194       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

fectly  natural  also.  However,  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
(who  appears  in  the  report  of  the  trial  as  "  Dr. 
Brown,  of  Norwich,  a  person  of  great  knowledge  "), 
being  desired  to  give  his  opinion  on  Elizabeth  Pacy's 
case  and  that  of  two  other  children  who  on  similar 
evidence  were  said  to  have  been  bewitched  by  the 
accused, — Sir  Thomas  Browne 

"  was  clearly  of  opinion  that  the  persons  were  bewitched  ;  and 
said  that  in  Denmark  there  had  been  lately  a  great  discovery 
of  witches,  who  used  the  very  same  way  of  afflicting  persons  by 
conveying  pins  into  them,  and  crooked,  as  these  pins  were, 
with  needles  and  nails.  And  his  opinion  was  that  the  Devil  in 
such  cases  did  work  upon  the  bodies  of  men  and  women  upon  a 
natural  foundation,  .  .  .  for  he  conceived  that  these  swooning 
fits  were  natural,  and  nothing  else  but  what  they  call  the  mother, 
but  only  heightened  to  a  great  excess  by  the  subtlety  of  the 
Devil,  co-operating  with  the  malice  of  these  which  we  term 
witches,  at  whose  instance  he  doth  these  villainies. " 

That  was  all  the  light  to  be  got  from  the  celebrated 
writer  on  Vulgar  Errors.  Yet  reason,  in  this  trial, 
was  not  left  quite  without  witness  : — 

"  At  the  hearing  the  evidence,  there  were  divers  known  per- 
sons, as  Mr.  Serjeant  Keeling,  Mr.  Serjeant  Earl,  and  Mr. 
Serjeant  Bernard,  present.  Mr.  Serjeant  Keeling  seemed  much 
unsatisfied  with  it,  and  thought  it  not  sufficient  to  convict  the 
prisoners  ;  for  admitting  that  the  children  were  in  truth  be- 
witched, yet,  said  he,  it  can  never  be  applied  to  the  prisoners 
upon  the  imagination  only  of  the  parties  afflicted.  For  if  that 
might  be  allowed,  no  person  whatsoever  can  be  in  safety  ;  for 
perhaps  they  might  fancy  another  person,  who  might  altogether 
be  innocent  in  such  matters." 

In  order,  therefore,  the  better  to  establish  the  guilt 
of  the  prisoners,  they  were  made  to  touch  the  children 
whom   they   were   said   to    have    bewitched.      The 


I.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  195 

children  screamed  out  at  their  touch.  The  children 
were  "  blinded  with  their  own  aprons,"  and  in  this 
condition  were  again  touched  by  Rose  Cullender ;  and 
again  they  screamed  out.  It  was  objected,  not  that 
the  children's  heads  were  fidl  of  Rose  Cullender  and 
Amy  Duny  and  of  their  infernal  dealings  with  them, 
but  that  the  children  might  be  counterfeiting  their 
malady  and  pretending  to  start  at  the  witch's  touch 
though  it  had  no  real  power  on  them  : — 

"  Wherefore,  to  avoid  this  scruple,  it  was  privately  desired  by 
the  judge,  that  the  Lord  Cornwallis,  Sir  Edward  Bacon,  Mr. 
Serjeant  Keeling,  and  some  other  gentlemen  then  in  Court, 
would  attend  one  of  the  distempered  persons  in  the  further  part 
of  the  hall,  whilst  she  was  in  her  fits,  and  then  to  send  for  one 
of  the  witches  to  try  what  would  then  happen,  which  they  did 
accordingly.  And  Amy  Duny  was  conveyed  from  the  bar  and 
brought  to  the  maid  ;  they  put  an  apron  before  her  eyes,  and 
then  one  other  person  touched  her  hand,  which  produced  the 
same  effect  as  the  touch  of  the  witch  did  in  the  Court.  Where- 
upon the  gentlemen  returned,  openly  protesting  that  they  did 
believe  the  whole  transaction  of  this  business  was  a  mere  im- 
posture. " 

This,  we  are  told,  "  put  the  Court  and  all  persons 
into  a  stand.  But  at  length  Mr.  Pacy  did  declare 
that  possibly  the  maid  might  be  deceived  by  a  sus- 
picion that  the  witch  touched  her  when  she  did  not." 
And  nothing  more  likely  ;  but  what  does  this  prove  ? 
That  the  child's  terrors  were  sincere  ;  not  that  the 
so-called  witch  had  done  the  acts  alleged  against  her. 
However,  Mr.  Pacy's  solution  of  the  difficulty  was 
readily  accepted.  If  the  children  were  not  shamming 
out  of  malice  or  from  a  love  of  imposture,  then  "it  is 
very  evident  that  the  parties  were  bewitched,  and 


196       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

that  when  they  apprehend  that  the  persons  who  have 
done  them  this  wrong  are  near,  or  touch  them,  then, 
their  spirits  being  more  than  ordinarily  moved  with 
rage  and  anger,  they  do  use  more  violent  gestures  of 
their  bodies." 

Such  was  the  evidence.  The  accused  did  not  con- 
fess themselves  guilty.  When  asked  what  they  had 
to  say  for  themselves,  they  replied,  as  well  they 
might :  "  Nothing  material  to  anything  that  had  been 
proved."  Hale  then  charged  the  jury.  He  did  not 
even  go  over  the  evidence  to  them  : — 

"  Only  this  he  acquainted  them  :  that  they  had  two  things 
to  inquire  after.  First,  whether  or  no  these  children  were 
bewitched  ;  secondly,  whether  the  prisoners  at  the  bar  were 
guilty  of  it.  That  there  were  such  creatures  as  witches  he 
made  no  doubt  at  all.  For,  first,  the  Scriptures  had  affirmed 
so  much  ;  secondly,  the  wisdom  of  all  nations  had  provided 
laws  against  such  persons,  which  is  an  argument  of  their  con- 
fidence of  such  a  crime.  And  such  hath  been  the  judgment  of 
this  kingdom,  as  appears  by  that  Act  of  Parliament  which  hath 
provided  punishments  proportionable  to  the  quality  of  the 
offence.  And  he  desired  them  strictly  to  observe  their  evidence, 
and  desired  the  great  God  of  Heaven  to  direct  their  hearts  in 
this  weighty  thing  they  had  in  hand.  For  to  condemn  the 
innocent,  and  to  let  the  guilty  go  free,  were  both  an  abomina- 
tion to  the  Lord." 

The  jury  retired.  In  half  an  hour  they  came  back 
with  a  verdict  of  guilty  against  both  prisoners.  Next 
morning  the  children  who  had  been  produced  in  court 
were  brought  to  Hale's  lodgings,  perfectly  restored : — 

"  Mr.  Pacy  did  affirm,  that  within  less  than  half  an  hour 
after  the  witches  were  convicted,  they  were  all  of  them  restored, 
and  slept  well  that  night  ;  only  Susan  Chandler  felt  a  pain  like 
pricking  of  pins  in  her  stomach." 


i.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  197 

And  this  seems  to  have  removed  all  shadow  of  doubt 
or  misgiving  : — 

"  In  conclusion,  the  judge  and  all  the  court  were  fully  satis- 
fied with  the  verdict,  and  thereupon  gave  judgment  against  the 
witches  that  they  should  be  hanged.  They  were  much  urged 
to  confess,  but  would  not.  That  morning  we  departed  for  Cam- 
bridge ;  but  no  reprieve  was  granted,  and  they  were  executed 
on  Monday,  the  17th  of  March  (1664)  following,  but  they  con- 
fessed nothing." 

Now,  the  inference  to  be  drawn  from  this  trial  is 
not  by  any  means  that  Hale  was  "  an  imbecile  or 
credulous  enthusiast."  The  whole  history  of  his  life 
and  doings  disproves  it.  But  the  belief  in  witchcraft 
was  in  the  very  atmosphere  which  Hale  breathed,  as 
the  belief  in  miracle  was  in  the  very  atmosphere 
which  St.  Paul  breathed.  What  the  trial  shows  us 
is,  that  a  man  of  veracity,  judgment,  and  mental 
power,  may  have  his  mind  thoroughly  governed,  on 
certain  subjects,  by  a  foregone  conclusion  as  to  what 
is  likely  and  credible.  But  I  will  not  further  enlarge 
on  the  illustration  which  Hale  furnishes  to  us  of  this 
truth.  An  illustration  of  it,  with  a  yet  closer  appli- 
cability to  St.  Paul,  is  supplied  by  another  worthy  of 
the  seventeenth  century. 


III. 

The  worthy  in  question  is  very  little  known,  and 
I  rejoice  to  have  an  opportunity  of  mentioning  him. 
John  Smith! — the  name  does  not  sound  promising. 
He  died  at  the  age  of  thirty-four,  having  risen  to  no 
higher  post  in  the  world  than  a  college  fellowship. 


198       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

"He  proceeded  leisurely  by  orderly  steps,"  says  Simon 
Patrick,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Ely,  who  preached  his 
funeral-sermon,  "not  to  what  he  could  get,  but  to 
what  he  was  fit  to  undertake."  John  Smith,  born  in 
1618  near  Oundle  in  Northamptonshire,  was  admitted 
a  scholar  of  Emanuel  College  at  Cambridge  in  1636, 
a  fellow  of  Queen's  College  in  1644.  He  became  a 
tutor  and  preacher  in  his  college  ;  died  there,  "  after 
a  tedious  sickness,"  on  the  7th  of  August  1652,  and 
was  buried  in  his  college-chapel.  He  was  one  of  that 
band  of  Cambridge  Platonists,  or  latitude  men,  as  in 
their  own  day  they  were  called,  whom  Burnet  has 
well  described  as  those  "  who,  at  Cambridge,  studied 
to  propagate  better  thoughts,  to  take  men  off  from 
being  in  parties,  or  from  narrow  notions,  from  super- 
stitious conceits  and  fierceness  about  opinions."  Prin- 
cipal Tulloch  has  done  an  excellent  work  in  seeking 
to  reawaken  our  interest  in  this  'noble  but  neglected 
group.  His  book1  is  delightful,  and  it  has,  at  the 
same  time,  the  most  serious  value.  But  in  his  account 
of  his  worthies,  Principal  Tulloch  has  given,  I  cannot 
but  think,  somewhat  too  much  space  to  their  Platonic 
philosophy,  to  their  disquisitions  on  spirit  and  in- 
corporeal essence.  It  is  not  by  these  that  they 
merited  to  live,  or  that,  having  passed  away  from 
men's  minds,  they  will  be  brought  back  to  them.  It 
is  by  their  extraordinary  simple,  profound,  and  just 
conception  of  religion.      Placed  between  the  sacer- 

1  Rational  Theolocj})  and  Christian  Philosophy  in  England  in 
the  Seventeenth  Century  ;  2d  edition,  Edinburgh  and  London, 
1874. 


i.]         A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.        199 

dotal  religion  of  the  Laudian  clergy  on  the  one  side, 
and  the  notional  religion  of  the  Puritans  on  the  other, 
they  saw  the  sterility,  the  certain  doom  of  both ; — 
saw  that  stand  permanently  such  developments  of 
religion  could  not,  inasmuch  as  Christianity  was  not 
what  either  of  them  supposed,  but  was  a  temper,  a 
behaviour. 

Their  immediate  recompense  was  a  religious  isola- 
tion of  two  centuries.  The  religious  world  was  not 
then  ripe  for  more  than  the  High  Church  conception 
of  Christianity  on  the  one  hand,  or  the  Puritan  con- 
ception on  the  other.  The  Cambridge  band  ceased 
to  acquire  recruits,  and  disappeared  with  the  century. 
Individuals  knew  and  used  their  writings ;  Bishop 
Wilson  of  Sodor  and  Man,  in  particular,  had  profited 
by  them.  But  they  made  no  broad  and  clear  mark. 
And  this  was  in  part  for  the  reason  already  assigned, 
in  part  because  what  passed  for  their  great  work  was 
that  revival  of  a  spiritualist  and  Platonic  philosophy, 
to  which  Principal  Tulloch,  as  I  have  said,  seems  to 
me  to  have  given  too  much  prominence.  By  this 
attempted  revival  they  could  not  and  cannot  live. 
The  theology  and  writings  of  Owen  are  not  more 
extinct  than  the  Intellectual  System  of  Cud  worth.  But 
in  a  history  of  the  Cambridge  Platonists,  works  of 
the  magnitude  of  Cudworth's  Intellectual  System  of  the 
Universe  must  necessarily,  perhaps,  fill  a  large  space. 
Therefore  it  is  not  so  much  a  history  of  this  group 
which  is  wanted,  as  a  republication  of  such  of  their 
utterances  as  show  us  their  real  spirit  and  power. 
Their  spiritual  brother,   "the  ever   memorable  Mr. 


200       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

John  Hales,"  must  certainly,  notwithstanding  that  he 
was  at  Oxford,  not  Cambridge,  be  classed  along  with 
them.  The  remains  of  Hales  of  Eton,  the  sermons 
and  aphorisms  of  Whichcote,  the  sermon  preached  by 
Cudworth  before  the  House  of  Commons  with  the 
second  sermon  printed  as  a  companion  to  it,  single 
sayings  and  maxims  of  Henry  More,  and  the  Select 
Discourses  of  John  Smith, — there  are  our  documents  ! 
In  them  lies  enshrined  what  the  latitude  men  have  of 
value  for  us.  It  were  well  if  Principal  Tulloch  would 
lay  us  under  fresh  obligations  by  himself  extracting 
this  and  giving  it  to  us ;  but  given  some  day,  and  by 
some  hand,  it  will  surely  be. 

For  Hales  and  the  Cambridge  Platonists  here  offer, 
formulated  with  sufficient  distinctness,  a  conception 
of  religion,  true,  long  obscured,  and  for  which  the 
hour  of  light  has  at  last  come.  Their  productions 
will  not,  indeed,  take  rank  as  great  works  of  litera- 
ture and  style.  It  is  not  to  the  history  of  literature 
that  Whichcote  and  Smith  belong,  but  to  the  history 
of  religion.  Their  contemporaries  were  Bossuet, 
Pascal,  Taylor,  Barrow.  It  is  in  the  history  of  litera- 
ture that  these  men  are  mainly  eminent,  although 
they  may  also  be  classed,  of  course,  among  religious 
writers.  What  counts  highest  in  the  history  of  reli- 
gion as  such,  is,  however,  to  give  what  at  critical 
moments  the  religious  life  of  mankind  needs  and  can 
use.  And  it  will  be  found  that  the  Cambridge  Pla- 
tonists, although  neither  epoch-making  philosophers 
nor  epoch-making  men  of  letters,  have  in  their  con- 
ception of  religion  a  boon  for  the  religious  wants  of 


L]  a  psychological  parallel.  201 

our  own  time,  such  as  we  shall  demand  in  vain  from 
the  soul  and  poetry  of  Taylor,  from  the  sense  and 
vigour  of  Barrow,  from  the  superb  exercitations  of 
Bossuet,  or  the  passion-filled  reasoning  and  rhetoric 
of  Pascal. 

The  Select  Discourses  of  John  Smith,  collected  and 
published  from  his  papers  after  his  death,  are,  in  my 
opinion,  by  much  the  most  considerable  work  left  to 
us  by  this  Cambridge  school.  They  have  a  right  to 
a  place  in  English  literary  history.  Yet  the  main 
value  of  the  Select  Discourses  is,  I  repeat,  religious,  not 
literary.  Their  grand  merit  is  that  they  insist  on  the 
profound  natural  truth  of  Christianity,  and  thus  base 
it  upon  a  ground  which  will  not  crumble  under  our 
feet.  Signal  and  rare  indeed  is  the  merit,  in  a  theo- 
logical instructor,  of  presenting  Christianity  to  us  in 
this  fashion.  Christianity  is  true ;  but  in  general  the 
whole  plan  for  grounding  and  buttressing  it  chosen 
by  our  theological  instructors  is  false,  and,  since  it  is 
false,  it  must  fail  us  sooner  or  later.  I  have  often 
thought  that  if  candidates  for  orders  were  simply,  in 
preparing  for  their  examination,  to  read  and  digest 
Smith's  great  discourse,  On  the  Excellency  and  Noble- 
ness of  True  Religion,  together  with  M.  Reuss's  History 
of  Christian  Theology  at  the  time  of  the  Apostles,  and 
nothing  further  except  the  Bible  itself,  we  might  have, 
perhaps,  a  hope  of  at  last  getting,  as  our  national 
guides  in  religion,  a  clergy  which  could  tell  its  bear- 
ings and  steer  its  way,  instead  of  being,  as  we  now  see 
it,  too  often  conspicuously  at  a  loss  to  do  either. 

Singularly  enough,  about  fifteen  years  before  the 


202       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

trial  at  Bury  St.  Edmunds  of  the  Lowestoft  witches, 
John  Smith,  the  author  of  the  Select  Discourses,  had 
in  those  very  eastern  counties  to  deliver  his  mind  on 
the  matter  of  witchcraft.  On  Lady-day  every  year, 
a  Fellow  of  Queen's  College,  Cambridge,  was  required 
to  preach  at  Huntingdon  a  sermon  against  witchcraft 
and  diabolical  contracts.  Smith,  as  one  of  the  Fellows 
of  Queen's,  had  to  preach  this  sermon.  It  is  printed 
tenth  and  last  of  his  Select  Discourses,  with  the  title : 
A  Christian's  Conflicts  and  Conquests/  or,  a  Discourse 
concerning  the  Devil's  Active  Enmity  and  Continual  Hos- 
tility against  Man,  the  Warfare  of  a  Christian  Life,  the 
Certainty  of  Success  and  Victory  in  this  Spiritual  Warfare, 
the  Evil  and  Horridness  of  Magical  Arts  and  Bites,  Dia- 
bolical Contracts,  &c.  The  discourse  has  for  its  text  the 
words :  "Resist  the  devil,  and  he  will  flee  from  you." 
The  preacher  sets  out  with  the  traditional  account 
of  "the  prince  of  darkness,  who,  having  once  stained 
the  original  beauty  and  glory  of  the  divine  workman- 
ship, is  continually  striving  to  mould  and  shape  it 
more  and  more  into  his  own  likeness."     He  says  : — 

"  It  were  perhaps  a  vain  curiosity  to  inquire  whether  the  num- 
ber of  evil  spirits  exceeds  the  number  of  men  ;  but  this  is  too, 
too  certain,  that  we  never  want  the  secret  and  latent  attendance 
of  them.  .  .  .  Those  evil  spirits  are  not  yet  cast  out  of  the  world 
into  outer  darkness,  though  it  be  prepared  for  them  ;  the  bot- 
tomless pit  hath  not  yet  shut  its  mouth  upon  them." 

And  he  concludes  his  sermon  with  a  reflection  and  a 

caution,  called  for,  he  says,  by  the  particular  occasion. 

The  reflection  is  that — 

"Did  we  not  live  in  a  world  of  professed  wickedness,  wherein 
so  many  men's  sins  go  in  open  view  before  them  to  judgment, 


I.]         A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.        203 

it  might  be  thought  needless  to  persuade  men  to  resist  the  devil 
when  he  appears  in  his  own  colours  to  make  merchandise  of 
them,  and  comes  in  a  formal  way  to  bargain  with  them  for  their 
souls,  that  which  human  nature,  however  enthralled  to  sin  and 
Satan  in  a  more  mysterious  way,  abhors,  and  none  admit  but 
those  who  are  quite  degenerated  from  human  kind." 

And  he  adds  the  caution,  that — 

"  The  use  of  any  arts,  rites  or  ceremonies  not  understood,  of 
which  we  can  give  no  rational  or  divine  account,  this  indeed  is 
nothing  else  but  a  kind  of  magic  which  the  devil  himself  owns 
and  gives  life  to,  though  he  may  not  be  corporeally  present,  or 
require  presently  any  further  covenant  from  the  users  of  them. 
The  devil,  no  question,  is  present  to  all  his  own  rites  and  cere- 
monies, though  men  discern  him  not,  and  may  upon  the  use  of 
them  secretly  produce  those  effects  which  may  gain  credit  to 
them.  Among  these  rites  we  may  reckon  insignificant  forms  of 
words,  with  their  several  modes  and  manner  of  pronunciation, 
astrological  arts,  and  whatsoever  else  pretends  to  any  strange 
effects  which  we  cannot  with  good  reason  either  ascribe  to  God 
or  nature.  As  God  will  only  be  conversed  withal  in  a  way  of 
light  and  understanding,  so  the  devil  loves  to  be  conversed  with 
in  a  way  of  darkness  and  obscurity." 

But  between  his  exordium  and  his  conclusion  the 
real  man  appears.  Like  Hale,  Smith  seems  to  have 
accepted  the  belief  in  witchcraft  and  in  diabolical 
contracts  which  was  regnant  in  his  day.  But  when 
he  came  to  deal  with  the  belief  as  an  idea  influencing 
thought  and  conduct,  he  could  not  take  it  as  the 
people  around  him  took  it.  It  was  his  nature  to  seek 
a  firm  ground  for  the  ideas  admitted  by  him  ;  above 
all,  when  these  ideas  had  bearings  upon  religion. 
And  for  witchcraft  and  diabolical  operation,  in  the 
common  conception  of  them  as  external  things,  he 
could  find  no  solid  ground,  for  there  was  none  ;  and 


204       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

therefore  he  could  not  so  use  them.  See,  therefore, 
how  profoundly  they  are  transformed  by  him  !  After 
his  exordium  he  makes  an  entirely  fresh  departure  : — 
"  When  we  say  the  devil  is  continually  busy  with 
us,  I  mean  not  only  some  apostate  spirit  as  one  parti- 
cular being,  but  that  spirit  of  apostasy  which  is  lodged 
in  all  men's  natures."  Here,  in  this  spirit  of  apostasy 
tvhich  is  lodged  in  all  men's  natures,  Smith  had  what 
was  at  bottom  experimental  and  real.  And  the  whole 
effort  of  the  sermon  is  to  substitute  this  for  what  men 
call  the  devil,  hell,  fiends,  and  witches,  as  an  object 
for  their  serious  thought  and  strenuous  resistance  : — 

"  As  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  not  so  much  without  men  as 
within,  as  our  Saviour  tells  us  ;  so  the  tyranny  of  the  devil  and 
hell  is  not  so  much  in  some  external  things  as  in  the  qualities 
and  dispositions  of  men's  minds.  And  as  the  enjoying  of  God, 
and  conversing  with  him,  consists  not  so  much  in  a  change  of 
place  as  in  the  participation  of  the  divine  nature  and  in  our 
assimilation  unto  God  ;  so  our  conversing  with  the  devil  is  not 
so  much  by  a  mutual  local  presence  as  by  an  imitation  of  a 
wicked  and  sinful  nature  derived  upon  men's  own  souls.  .  .  . 
He  that  allows  himself  in  any  sin,  or  useth  an  unnatural  dalli- 
ance with  any  vice,  does  nothing  else  in  reality  than  entertain 
an  incubus  demon. " 

This,  however,  was  by  no  means  a  view  of  diaboli- 
cal possession  acceptable  to  the  religious  world  and  to 
its  Puritan  ministers  : — 

"  I  know  these  expressions  will  seem  to  some  very  harsh  and 
unwelcome  ;  but  I  would  beseech  them  to  consider  what  they 
will  call  that  spirit  of  malice  and  envy,  that  spirit  of  pride, 
ambition,  vain-glory,  covetousness,  injustice,  uncleanness,  etc., 
that  commonly  reigns  so  much  and  acts  so  violently  in  the 
minds  and  lives  of  men.  Let  us  speak  the  truth,  and  call 
things  by  their  own  names  ;  so  much  as  there  is  of  sin  in  any 


I.]         A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.       205 

man,  so  much  there  is  of  the  diabolical  nature.  Why  do  we 
defy  the  devil  so  much  with  our  tongues,  while  we  entertain 
him  in  our  hearts  ?  As  men's  love  to  God  is  ordinarily  nothing 
else  but  the  mere  tendency  of  their  natures  to  something  that 
hath  the  name  of  God  put  upon  it,  without  any  clear  or  distinct 
apprehensions  of  him,  so  their  hatred  of  the  devil  is  commonly 
nothing  else  but  an  inward  displacency  of  nature  against  some- 
thing entitled  by  the  devil's  name.  And  as  they  commonly 
make  a  God  like  to  themselves,  such  a  one  as  they  can  but 
comply  with  and  love,  so  they  make  a  devil  most  unlike  to 
themselves,  which  may  be  anything  but  what  they  themselves 
are,  that  so  they  may  most  freely  spend  their  anger  and  hatred 
upon  him  ;  just  as  they  say  of  some  of  the  Ethiopians  who  used 
to  paint  the  devil  white  because  they  themselves  are  black. 
This  is  a  strange,  merry  kind  of  madness,  whereby  men  sport- 
ingly  bereave  themselves  of  the  supremest  good,  and  insure 
themselves,  as  much  as  may  be,  to  hell  and  misery  ;  they  may 
thus  cheat  themselves  for  a  while,  but  the  eternal  foundation  of 
the  Divine  Being  is  immutable  and  unchangeable.  And  where 
we  find  wisdom,  justice,  loveliness,  goodness,  love,  and  glory  in 
their  highest  elevations  and  most  unbounded  dimensions,  that 
is  He  ;  and  where  we  find  any  true  participations  of  these,  there 
is  a  true  communication  of  God  ;  and  a  defection  from  these  is 
the  essence  of  sin  and  the  foundation  of  hell." 

Finally  (and  I  quote  the  more  freely  because  the 
author  whom  I  quote  is  so  little  known), — finally  our 
preacher  goes  on  to  even  confute  his  own  exordium  : — 

"  It  was  the  fond  error  of  the  Manichees  that  there  was  some 
solid  principium  mali,  which,  having  an  eternal  existence  of  its 
own,  had  also  a  mighty  and  uncontrollable  power  from  within 
itself  whereby  it  could  forcibly  enter  into  the  souls  of  men,  and, 
seating  itself  there,  by  some  hidden  influences  irresistibly  incline 
and  enforce  them  to  evil.  But  we  ourselves  uphold  that  king- 
dom of  darkness,  which  else  would  tumble  down  and  slide  into 
that  nothing  from  whence  it  came.  All  sin  and  vice  is  our  oiai 
creature  ;  we  only  give  life  to  them  which  indeed  are  our  death, 
and  would  soon  wither  and  fade  away  did  we  substract  our  con- 
currence from  them." 


206       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

0  fortunate  Huntingdon  Church,  which  admitted 
for  even  one  day  such  a  counterblast  to  the  doctrines 
then  sounding  from  every  pulpit,  and  still  enjoined 
by  Sir  Eobert  Phillimore  ! 

That  a  man  shares  an  error  of  the  minds  around 
him  and  of  the  times  in  which  he  lives,  proves  nothing 
against  his  being  a  man  of  veracity,  judgment,  and 
mental  power.  This  we  saw  by  the  case  of  Hale. 
But  here,  in  our  Cambridge  Platonist,  we  have  a  man 
who  accepts  the  erroneous  belief  in  witchcraft,  pro- 
fesses it  publicly,  preaches  on  it ;  and  yet  is  not  only 
a  man  of  veracity  and  intelligence,  but  actually 
manages  to  give  to  the  error  adopted  by  him  a  turn, 
an  aspect,  which  indicates  its  erroneousness.  Not 
only  is  he  of  help  to  us  generally,  in  spite  of  his  error ; 
he  is  of  help  to  us  in  respect  of  that  very  error  itself. 

Now,  herein  is  really  a  most  striking  analogy 
between  our  little -known  divine  of  the  seventeenth 
century  and  the  great  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles.  St. 
Paul's  writings  are  in  every  one's  hands.  I  have 
myself  discussed  his  doctrine  at  length.  And  for  our 
present  purpose  there  is  no  need  of  elaborate  exposi- 
tion and  quotation.  Every  one  knows  how  St.  Paul 
declares  his  belief  that  "  Christ  rose  again  the  third 
day,  and  was  seen  of  Cephas,  then  of  the  twelve ;  after 
that,  he  was  seen  of  above  five  hundred  brethren  at 
once."1  Those  who  do  not  admit  the  miraculous  can 
yet  well  conceive  how  such  a  belief  arose,  and  was 
entertained  by  St.  Paul.  The  resurrection  of  the  just 
was   at  that  time  a  ruling  idea  of   a  Jew's  mind. 

1  1  Cor.  xv.  4,  5,  G. 


i.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  207 

Herod  at  once,  and  without  difficulty,  supposed  that 
John  the  Baptist  was  risen  from  the  dead.  The  Jewish 
people  without  difficulty  supposed  that  Jesus  might 
be  one  of  the  old  prophets,  risen  from  the  dead.  In 
telling  the  story  of  the  crucifixion  men  added,  quite 
naturally,  that  when  it  was  consummated,  "many 
bodies  of  the  saints  which  slept  arose  and  appeared 
unto  many."  Jesus  himself,  moreover,  had  in  his  life- 
time spoken  frequently  of  his  own  coming  resurrection. 
Such  beliefs  as  the  belief  in  bodily  resurrection  were 
thus  a  part  of  the  mental  atmosphere  in  which  the 
first  Christians  lived.  It  was  inevitable  that  they 
should  believe  their  Master  to  have  risen  again  in  the 
body,  and  that  St.  Paul,  in  becoming  a  Christian, 
should  receive  the  belief  and  build  upon  it. 

But  Paul,  like  our  Cambridge  Platonist,  instinc- 
tively sought  in  an  idea,  used  for  religion,  a  side  by 
which  the  idea  could  enter  into  his  religious  experi- 
ence and  become  real  to  him.  No  such  side  could  be 
afforded  by  the  mere  external  fact  and  miracle  of 
Christ's  bodily  resurrection.  Paul,  therefore,  as  is 
well  known,  by  a  prodigy  of  religious  insight  seized 
another  aspect  for  the  resurrection  than  the  aspect 
of  physical  miracle.  He  presented  resurrection  as 
a  spiritual  rising  which  could  be  appropriated  and 
enacted  in  our  own  living  experience.  "If  One  died 
in  the  name  of  all,  then  all  died ;  and  he  died  in  the 
name  of  all,  that  they  who  live  should  no  more  live 
unto  themselves,  but  unto  him  who  died  and  rose 
again  in  their  name." 1    Dying  became  thus  no  longer 

1  2  Cor.  v.  14,  15. 


208       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

a  bodily  dying,  but  a  dying  to  sin ;  rising  to  life  no 
longer  a  bodily  resurrection,  but  a  living  to  God. 
St.  Paul  here  comes,  therefore,  upon  that  very  idea 
of  death  and  resurrection  which  was  the  central  idea 
of  Jesus  himself.  At  the  very  same  moment  that  he 
shares  and  professes  the  popular  belief  in  Christ's 
miraculous  bodily  resurrection, — the  idea  by  which 
our  Saviour's  own  idea  of  resurrection  has  been  over- 
laid and  effaced, —  St.  Paul  seizes  also  this  other 
truer  idea  or  is  seized  by  it,  and  bears  unconscious 
witness  to  its  unique  legitimacy. 

Where,  then,  is  the  force  of  that  argument  of 
despair,  as  we  called  it,  that  if  St.  Paul  vouches  for 
the  bodily  resurrection  of  Jesus  and  for  his  appear- 
ance after  it,  and  is  mistaken  in  so  vouching,  then 
he  must  be  "  an  imbecile  and  credulous  enthusiast," 
untruthful,  unprofitable  1  We  see  that  for  a  man  to 
believe  in  preternatural  incidents,  of  a  kind  admitted 
by  the  common  belief  of  his  time,  proves  nothing 
at  all  against  his  general  truthfulness  and  sagacity. 
Nay,  we  see  that  even  while  affirming  such  preter- 
natural incidents,  he  may  with  profound  insight  seize 
the  true  and  natural  aspect  of  them,  the  aspect  which 
will  survive  and  profit  when  the  miraculous  aspect 
has  faded.  He  may  give  us,  in  the  very  same  work, 
current  error  and  also  fruitful  and  profound  new 
truth,  the  error's  future  corrective. 


i.]        A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.       209 


IV. 

Bat  I  am  treating  of  these  matters  for  the  last 
time.  And  those  who  no  longer  admit,  in  religion, 
the  old  basis  of  the  preternatural,  I  see  them  encoun- 
tered by  scruples  of  their  own,  as  well  as  by  scruples 
raised  by  their  opponents.  Their  opponents,  the  par- 
tisans of  miracle,  require  them,  if  they  refuse  to  admit 
miracle  to  throw  aside  as  imbecile  or  untruthful  all 
their  instructors  and  inspirers  who  have  ever  admitted 
it.  But  they  themselves,  too,  are  sometimes  afraid, 
not  only  of  being  called  inconsistent  and  insincere, 
but  of  really  meriting  to  be  called  so,  if  they  do  not 
break  decidedly  with  the  religion  in  which  they  have 
been  brought  up,  if  the}*-  at  all  try  still  to  conform  to 
it  and  to  use  it.  I  have  now  before  me  a  remarkable 
letter,  in  which  the  writer  says  : — 

"There  is  nothing  I  and  many  others  should  like  better 
than  to  take  service  as  ministers  in  the  Church  as  a  national 
society  for  the  promotion  of  goodness;  but  how  can  we  do  so, 
when  we  have  first  to  declare  onr  belief  in  a  quantity  of  things 
which  every  intelligent  man  rejects  ? " 

Now,  as  I  have  examined  the  question  whether  a 
man  who  rejects  miracles  must  break  with  St.  Paul 
because  Paul  asserted  them,  so  let  me,  before  I  end, 
examine  the  question  whether  such  a  man  must  break 
with  the  Church  of  his  country  and  childhood. 

Certainly  it  is  a  strong  thing  to  suppose,  as  the 
writer  of  the  above -quoted  letter  supposes,  a  man 
taking  orders  in  the  Church  of  England  who  accepts, 

VOL.  vir.  p 


210       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

say,  the  view  of  Christianity  offered  in  Literature  and 
Dogma.  For  the  Church  of  England  presents  as 
science,  and  as  necessary  to  salvation,  what  it  is  the 
very  object  of  that  book  to  show  to  be  not  science 
and  not  necessary  to  salvation.  And  at  his  ordination 
a  man  is  required  to  declare  that  he,  too,  accepts  this 
for  science,  as  the  Church  does.  Formerly  a  deacon 
subscribed  to  the  Thirty -nine  Articles,  and  to  a 
declaration  that  he  acknowledged  "all  and  every 
the  articles  therein  contained  to  be  agreeable  to 
the  word  of  God."  A  clerk,  admitted  to  a  benefice 
with  cure,  declared  "his  unfeigned  assent  and  con- 
sent to  all  the  matters  contained  in  the  Articles." 
At  present,  I  think,  all  that  is  required  is  a  general 
consent  to  whatever  is  contained  in  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer.  But  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer 
contains  the  Thirty-nine  Articles.  And  the  Eighth 
Article  declares  the  Three  Creeds  to  be  science,  science 
"  thoroughly  to  be  received  and  believed."  Now, 
whether  one  professes  "an  unfeigned  assent  and 
consent"  to  this  Article,  as  contained  among  the 
Thirty-nine  Articles,  or  merely  "a  general  consent" 
to  it,  as  contained  in  the  Prayer  Book,  one  certainly, 
by  consenting  to  it  at  all,  professes  to  receive  the 
Three  Creeds  as  science,  and  as  true  science.  And 
this  is  the  very  point  where  it  is  important  to  be 
explicit  and  firm.  Whatever  else  the  Three  Creeds 
may  be,  they  are  not  science,  truly  formulating  the 
Christian  religion.  And  no  one  who  feels  convinced 
that  they  are  not,  can  sincerely  say  that  he  gives  even 
a  general  consent  to  whatever  is  contained  in  the 


i.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  211 

Prayer  Book,  or  can  at  present,  therefore,  be  ordained 
a  minister  of  the  Church  of  England. 

The  obstacle,  it  will  be  observed,  is  in  a  test  which 
lies  outside  of  the  Ordination  Service  itself.  The  test 
is  a  remnant  of  the  system  of  subscriptions  and  tests 
formerly  employed  so  vigorously.  It  was  meant  as  a 
reduction  and  alleviation  of  that  old  yoke.  To  obtain 
such  a  reduction  seemed  once  to  generous  and  ardent 
minds,  and  indeed  once  was,  a  very  considerable  con- 
quest. But  the  times  move  rapidly,  and  even  the 
reduced  test  has  now  a  great  power  of  exclusion.  If 
it  were  possible  for  Liberal  politicians  ever  to  deal 
seriously  with  religion,  they  would  turn  their  minds 
to  the  removal  of  a  test  of  this  sort,  instead  of  play- 
ing with  political  dissent  or  marriage  with  a  deceased 
wife's  sister.  The  Ordination  Service  itself,  on  a 
man's  entrance  into  orders,  and  the  use  of  the 
Church  services  afterwards,  are  a  sufficient  engage- 
ment. Things  were  put  into  the  Ordination  Service 
which  one  might  have  wished  otherwise.  Some  of 
them  are  gone.  The  introduction  of  the  Oath  of 
Supremacy  was  a  part,  no  doubt,  of  all  that  lion  and 
unicorn  business  which  is  too  plentiful  in  our  Prayer 
Book,  on  which  Dr.  Newman  has  showered  such 
exquisite  raillery,  and  of  which  only  the  Philistine 
element  in  our  race  prevents  our  seeing  the  ridiculous- 
ness. But  the  Oath  of  Supremacy  has  now  no  longer 
a  place  in  the  Ordination  Service.  Apart,  however, 
from  such  mere  matters  of  taste,  there  was  and  still 
is  the  requirement,  in  the  Ordering  of  Deacons,  of  a 
declaration  of  unfeigned  belief  in  all  the  canonical 


'212       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament.  Perhaps 
this  declaration  can  have  a  construction  put  upon  it 
which  makes  it  admissible.  But  by  its  form  of  expres- 
sion it  recalls,  and  appears  to  adopt,  the  narrow  and 
letter -bound  views  of  Biblical  inspiration  formerly 
prevalent, — prevalent  with  the  Fathers  as  well  as 
with  the  Reformers, — but  which  are  now,  I  suppose, 
generally  abandoned.  I  imagine  the  clergy  them- 
selves would  be  glad  to  substitute  for  this  declaration 
the  words  in  the  Ordering  of  Priests,  where  the  can- 
didate declares  himself  "  persuaded  that  the  Holy 
Scriptures  contain  sufficiently  all  doctrine  required 
for  eternal  salvation  through  faith  in  Jesus  Christ." 
These  words  present  no  difficulty,  nor  is  there  any 
other  serious  difficulty,  that  I  can  see,  raised  by  the 
Ordination  Service  for  either  priests  or  deacons. 
The  declaration  of  a  general  consent  to  the  Articles 
is  another  matter ;  although  perhaps,  in  the  present 
temper  of  men's  minds,  it  could  not  easily  be  got 
rid  of. 

The  last  of  Butler's  jottings  in  his  memorandum- 
book  is  a  prayer  to  be  delivered  "  from  offendiculum  of 
scrupulousness."  He  was  quite  right.  Religion  is  a 
matter  where  scrupulousness  has  been  far  too  active, 
producing  most  serious  mischief;  and  where  it  is 
singularly  out  of  place.  I  am  the  very  last  person  to 
wish  to  deny  it.  Those,  therefore,  who  declared 
their  consent  to  the  Articles  long  ago,  and  who  are 
usefully  engaged  in  the  ministry  of  the  Church,  would 
in  my  opinion  do  exceedingly  ill  to  disquiet  them- 
selves about  having  given  a  consent  to  the  Articles 


I.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  213 

formerly,  when  things  had  not  moved  to  the  point 
where  they  are  now,  and  did  not  appear  to  men's 
minds  as  they  now  appear.  "  Forgetting  those  things 
which  are  behind  and  reaching  forth  to  those  things 
which  are  before,"  should  in  these  cases  be  a  man's 
motto.  The  Church  is  properly  a  national  society 
for  the  promotion  of  goodness.  For  him  it  is  such  ; 
he  ministers  in  it  as  such.  He  has  never  to  use  the 
Articles,  never  to  rehearse  them.  He  has  to  rehearse 
the  prayers  and  services  of  the  Church.  Much  of 
these  he  may  rehearse  as  the  literal,  beautiful  render- 
ing of  what  he  himself  feels  and  believes.  The  rest 
he  may  rehearse  as  an  approximative  rendering  of  it ; 
— as  language  thrown  out  by  other  men,  in  other 
times,  at  immense  objects  which  deeply  engaged 
their  affections  and  awe,  and  which  deeply  engage 
his  also ;  objects  concerning  which,  moreover,  ade- 
quate statement  is  impossible.  To  him,  therefore, 
this  approximative  part  of  the  prayers  and  services 
which  he  rehearses  will  be  poetry.  It  is  a  great 
error  to  think  that  whatever  is  thus  perceived  to  be 
poetry  ceases  to  be  available  in  religion.  The  noblest 
races  are  those  which  know  how  to  make  the  most 
serious  use  of  poetry. 

But  the  Articles  are  plain  prose.  They  aim  at  the 
exactitude  of  a  legal  document.  They  are  a  precise 
profession  of  belief,  formulated  by  men  of  our  own 
nation  three  hundred  years  ago,  in  regard,  amongst 
other  things,  to  parts  of  those  services  of  the  Church 
of  which  we  have  been  speaking.  At  all  points  the 
Articles  are,  and  must  be,  inadequate ;  but  into  the 


214       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUECH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

question  of  their  general  inadequacy  we  need  not  now 
enter.  One  point  is  sufficient.  They  present  the 
Creeds  as  science,  exact  science ;  and  this,  at  the 
present  time  of  day,  very  many  a  man  cannot  accept. 
He  cannot  rightly,  then,  profess  in  any  way  to  accept 
it;  cannot,  in  consequence,  take  orders. 

But  it  is  easy  for  such  a  man  to  exaggerate  to 
himself  the  barrier  between  himself  and  popular  re- 
ligion. The  barrier  is  not  so  great  as  he  may  sup- 
pose ;  and  it  is  expedient  for  him  rather  to  think 
it  less  great  than  it  is,  than  more  great.  It  will 
insensibly  dwindle,  the  more  that  he,  and  other  serious 
men  who  think  as  he  does,  strive  so  far  as  they  can 
to  act  as  if  it  did  not  exist.  It  will  stand  stiff  and 
bristling  the  more  they  act  as  if  it  were  insurmount- 
able. The  Church  of  our  country  is  to  be  considered 
as  a  national  Christian  society  for  the  promotion  of 
goodness,  to  which  a  man  cannot  but  wish  well,  and 
in  which  he  might  rejoice  to  minister.  To  a  right- 
judging  mind,  the  cardinal  points  of  belief  for  either 
the  member  or  the  minister  of  such  a  society  are  but 
two  :  Salvation  by  Righteousness  and  Righteousness  by 
Jesus  Christ.  Salvation  by  Eighteousness, — there 
is  the  sum  of  the  Old  Testament :  Righteousness  by 
Jesus  Christ, — there  is  the  sum  of  the  New.  For 
popular  religion,  the  cardinal  points  of  belief  are  of 
course  a  good  deal  more  numerous.  Not  without 
adding  many  others  could  popular  religion  manage  to 
benefit  by  the  first-named  two.  But  the  first-named 
two  have  its  adherence.  It  is  from  the  very  effort 
to  benefit  by  them  that  it  has  added  all  the  rest.    The 


I.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  215 

services  of  the  Church  are  full  of  direct  recognitions 
of  the  two  really  essential  points  of  Christian 
belief  :  Salvation  by  Righteousness  and  Righteousness  by 
Jesus  Christ.  They  are  full,  too,  of  what  may  be 
called  approximate  recognitions  of  them  ; — efforts  of 
the  human  mind,  in  its  gradual  growth,  to  develop 
them,  to  fix  them,  to  buttress  them,  to  make  them 
clearer  to  itself,  to  bring  them  nearer,  by  the  addition 
of  miracle  and  metaphysic.  This  is  poetry.  The 
Articles  say  that  this  poetry  is  exact  prose.  But  the 
Articles  are  no  more  a  real  element  of  the  Prayer 
Book  than  Brady  and  Tate's  metrical  version  of  the 
Psalms,  which  has  now  happily  been  expelled.  And 
even  while  the  Articles  continue  to  stand  in  the 
Prayer  Book,  yet  a  layman  can  use  the  Prayer  Book 
as  if  they  and  their  definitions  did  not  exist.  To  be 
ordained,  however,  one  must  adhere  to  their  defini- 
tions. But,  putting  the  Articles  aside,  will  a  layman, 
since  he  is  free,  would  a  clergyman,  if  he  were  free, 
desire  to  abandon  the  use  of  all  those  parts  of  the 
Prayer  Book  which  are  to  be  regarded  as  merely 
approximative  recognitions  of  its  two  central  truths, 
and  as  poetry  1  Must  all  such  parts  one  day,  as  our 
experience  widens  and  this  view  of  their  character 
comes  to  prevail,  be  eliminated  from  our  public 
worship  1     The  question  is  a  most  important  one. 

For  although  the  Comtists,  by  the  mouth  of  their 
most  eloquent  spokesman,  tell  us  that  "'tis  the 
pedantry  of  sect  alone  which  can  dare  to  monopolise 
to  a  special  creed  those  precious  heirlooms  of  a 
common  race,"  the  ideas  and  power  of  religion,  and 


216       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

propose  to  remake  religion  for  us  with  new  and  im- 
proved personages,  and  rites,  and  words ;  yet  it  is 
certain  that  here  as  elsewhere  the  wonderful  force  of 
habit  tells,  and  that  the  power  of  religious  ideas  over 
us  does  not  spring  up  at  call,  but  is  intimately  de- 
pendent upon  particular  names  and  practices  and 
forms  of  expression  which  have  gone  along  with  it 
ever  since  we  can  remember,  and  which  have  created 
special  sentiments  in  us.  I  believe,  indeed,  that  the 
eloquent  spokesman  of  the  Comtists  errs  at  the  very 
outset.  I  believe  that  the  power  of  religion  does  of 
nature  belong,  in  a  unique  way,  to  the  Bible  and  to 
Christianity,  and  that  it  is  no  pedantry  of  sect  which 
affirms  this,  but  experience.  Yet  even  were  it  as  he 
supposes,  and  Christianity  were  not  the  one  proper 
bringer-in  of  righteousness  and  of  the  reign  of  the 
Spirit  and  of  eternal  life,  and  these  were  to  be  got 
as  well  elsewhere,  but  still  we  ourselves  had  learnt 
all  we  know  about  them  from  Christianity, — then  for 
us  to  be  taught  them  in  some  other  guise,  by  some 
other  instructor,  would  be  almost  impossible.  Habits 
and  associations  are  not  formed  in  a  day.  Even  if 
the  very  young  have  time  enough  before  them  to 
learn  to  associate  religion  with  new  personages  and 
precepts,  the  middle-aged  and  the  old  have  not,  and 
must  shrink  from  such  an  endeavour.  Mane  nobiscum, 
Domine,  nam  advesperascit. 

Nay,  but  so  prodigious  a  revolution  does  the 
changing  the  whole  form  and  feature  of  religion  turn 
out  to  be,  that  it  even  unsettles  all  other  things  too, 
and  brings  back  chaos.     When  it  happens,  the  civil  i- 


I.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  217 

sation  and  the  society  to  which  it  happens  are  dis- 
integrated, and  men  have  to  begin  again.  This  is 
what  took  place  when  Christianity  superseded  the 
old  religion  of  the  Pagan  world.  People  may  say 
that  there  is  a  fund  of  ideas  common  to  all  religions, 
at  least  to  all  religions  of  superior  and  civilised  races ; 
and  that  the  personages  and  precepts,  the  form  and 
feature,  of  one  such  religion  may  be  exchanged  for 
those  of  another,  or  for  those  of  some  new  religion 
devised  by  an  enlightened  eclecticism,  and  the  world 
may  go  on  all  the  while  without  much  disturbance. 
There  were  philosophers  who  thought  so  when 
Paganism  was  going  out  and  Christianity  coming- 
in.  But  they  were  mistaken.  The  whole  civilisa- 
tion of  the  Roman  world  was  disintegrated  by  the 
change,  and  men  had,  I  say,  to  begin  again.  So 
immense  is  the  sentiment  created  by  the  things  to 
which  we  have  been  used  in  religion,  so  profound  is 
the  wrench  at  parting  with  them,  so  incalculable  is 
the  trouble  and  distraction  caused  by  it.  Now,  we 
can  hardly  conceive  modern  civilisation  breaking  up 
as  the  Roman  did,  and  men  beginning  again  as  they 
did  in  the  fifth  century.  But  the  improbability  of 
this  implies  the  improbability,  too,  of  our  seeing  all 
the  form  and  feature  of  Christianity  disappear, — of 
the  religion  of  Christendom.  For  so  vast  a  revolution 
would  this  be,  that  it  would  involve  the  other. 

These  considerations  are  of  force,  I  think,  in  re- 
gard to  all  radical  change  in  the  language  of  the 
Prayer  Book.  It  has  created  sentiments  deeper  than 
we  can  see  or  measure.     Our  feeling  does  not  connect 


218       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

itself  with  any  language  about  righteousness  and 
religion,  but  with  that  language.  Very  much  of  it 
we  can  all  use  in  its  literal  acceptation.  But  the 
question  is  as  to  those  parts  which  we  cannot.  Of 
course,  those  who  can  take  them  literally  will  still 
continue  to  use  them.  But  for  us  also,  who  can  no 
longer  put  the  literal  meaning  on  them  which  others 
do,  and  which  we  ourselves  once  did,  they  retain  a 
power,  and  something  in  us  vibrates  to  them.  And 
not  unjustly.  For  these  old  forms  of  expression  were 
men's  sincere  attempt  to  set  forth  with  due  honour 
what  we  honour  also ;  and  the  sense  of  the  attempt 
gives  a  beauty  and  an  emotion  to  the  words,  and 
makes  them  poetry.  The  Creeds  are  in  this  way  an 
attempt  to  exalt  to  the  utmost,  by  assigning  to  him 
all  the  characters  which  to  mankind  seemed  to  confer 
exaltation,  Jesus  Christ.  I  have  elsewhere  called  the 
Apostles'  Creed  the  popular  science  of  Christianity, 
and  the  Nicene  Creed  its  learned  science ;  and  in  one 
view  of  them  they  are  so.  But  in  another  and  a 
better  view  of  them,  they  are,  the  one  its  popular 
poetry,  the  other  its  learned  or, — to  borrow  the  word 
which  Schopenhauer  applied  to  Hegel's  philosophy, 
— its  scholastic  poetry.  The  one  Creed  exalts  Jesus  by 
concrete  images,  the  other  by  an  imaginative  play  of 
abstract  ideas.  These  two  Creeds  are  the  august 
amplifications,  or  the  high  elucidations,  which  came 
naturally  to  the  human  spirit  working  in  love  and 
awe  upon  that  inexhaustible  theme  of  profound  truth : 
Salvation  through  Jesus  Christ.  As  such,  they  are 
poetry  for  us ;  and  poetry  consecrated,  moreover,  by 


I.]         A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.       219 

having  been  on  the  tongue  of  all  our  forefathers  for 
two  thousand  years,  and  on  our  own  tongue  ever  since 
we  were  born.  As  such,  then,  we  can  feel  them,  even 
when  we  no  longer  take  them  literally;  while,  as 
approximations  to  a  profound  truth,  we  can  use  them. 
We  cannot  call  them  science,  as  the  Articles  would 
have  us ;  but  we  can  still  feel  them  and  still  use 
them.  And  if  we  can  do  this  with  the  Creeds,  still 
more  can  we  do  it  with  the  rest  of  the  services  in  the 
Prayer  Book. 

As  to  the  very  and  true  foundations,  therefore,  of 
the  Christian  religion, — the  belief  that  salvation  is  by 
righteousness,  and  that  righteousness  is  by  Jesus 
Christ, — we  are,  in  fact,  at  one  with  the  religious 
world  in  general.  As  to  the  true  object  of  the 
Church,  that  it  is  the  promotion  of  goodness,  we  are 
at  one  with  them  also.  And  as  to  the  form  and 
wording  of  religion, — a  form  and  wording  consecrated 
by  so  many  years  and  memories, — even  as  to  this  we 
need  not  break  with  them  either.  They  and  we  can 
remain  in  sympathy.  Some  changes  will  no  doubt 
befall  the  Prayer  Book  as  time  goes  on.  Certain 
things  will  drop  away  from  its  services,  other  things 
will  replace  them.  But  such  change  will  happen,  not 
in  a  sweeping  way ; — it  will  come  very  gradually,  and 
by  the  general  wish.  It  will  be  brought  about,  not 
by  a  spirit  of  scrupulosity,  innovation,  and  negation, 
but  by  a  prevalent  impulse  to  express  in  our  church- 
services  somewhat  which  is  felt  to  need  expression, 
and  to  be  not  sufficiently  expressed  there  already. 

After  all  the  great  confirmation  to  a  man  in  be- 


220       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [j. 

lieving  that  the  cardinal  points  of  our  religion  are  far 
fewer  and  simpler  than  is  commonly  supposed,  is  that 
such  was  surely  the  belief  of  Jesus  himself.  And  in 
like  manner,  the  great  reason  for  continuing  to  use 
the  familiar  language  of  the  religion  around  us  as 
approximative  language,  and  as  poetry,  although  we 
cannot  take  it  literally,  is  that  such  was  also  the  prac- 
tice of  Jesus.  For  evidently  it  was  so.  And  evidently, 
again,  the  immense  misapprehension  of  Jesus  and  of 
his  meaning,  by  popular  religion,  comes  in  part  from 
such  having  been  his  practice.  But  if  Jesus  used  this 
way  of  speaking  in  spite  of  its  plainly  leading  to  such 
misapprehension,  it  must  have  been  because  it  was  the 
best  way  and  the  only  one.  For  it  was  not  by  intro- 
ducing a  brand-new  religious  language,  and  by  parting 
with  all  the  old  and  cherished  images,  that  popular 
religion  could  be  transformed ;  but  by  keeping  the 
old  language  and  images,  and  as  far  as  possible  con- 
veying into  them  the  soul  of  the  new  Christian  ideal. 
When  Jesus  talked  of  the  Son  of  Man  coming  in 
his  glory  with  the  holy  angels,  setting  the  good  on 
his  right  hand  and  the  bad  on  his  left,  and  sending 
away  the  bad  into  everlasting  fire  prepared  for  the 
devil  and  his  angels,  was  he  speaking  literally  1  Did 
Jesus  mean  that  all  this  would  actually  happen? 
Popular  religion  supposes  so.  Yet  very  many  reli- 
gious people,  even  now,  suppose  that  Jesus  was  but 
using  the  figures  of  Messianic  judgment  familiar  to 
his  hearers,  in  order  to  impress  upon  them  his  main 
point : — what  sort  of  spirit  and  of  practice  did  really 
tend  to  salvation,  and  what  did  not.     And  surely  al- 


I.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  221 

most  every  one  must  perceive,  that  when  Jesus  spoke 
to  his  disciples  of  their  sitting  on  thrones  judging  the 
twelve  tribes  of  Israel,  or  of  their  drinking  new  wine 
with  him  in  the  kingdom  of  God,  he  was  adopting 
their  material  images  and  beliefs,  and  was  not  speak- 
ing literally.  Yet  their  Master's  thus  adopting  their 
material  images  and  beliefs  could  not  but  confirm  the 
disciples  in  them.  And  so  it  did,  and  Christendom, 
too,  after  them;  yet  in  this  way,  apparently,  Jesus, 
chose  to  proceed.  But  some  one  may  say,  that  Jesus 
used  this  language  because  he  himself  shared  the 
materialistic  notions  of  his  disciples  about  the  king- 
dom of  God,  and  thought  that  coming  upon  the  clouds, 
and  sitting  upon  thrones,  and  drinking  wine,  would 
really  occur  in  it,  and  was  mistaken  in  thinking  so. 
And  yet  there  are  plain  signs  that  this  cannot  be  the 
right  account  of  the  matter,  and  that  Jesus  did  not 
really  share  the  beliefs  of  his  disciples  or  conceive  the 
kingdom  of  God  as  they  did.  For  they  manifestly 
thought, — even  the  wisest  of  them,  and  after  their 
Master's  death  as  well  as  before  it, — that  this  king- 
dom was  to  be  a  sudden,  miraculous,  outward  trans- 
formation of  things,  which  was  to  come  about  very 
soon  and  in  their  own  lifetime.  Nevertheless  they 
themselves  report  Jesus  saying  what  is  in  direct  con- 
tradiction to  all  this.  They  report  him  describing  the 
kingdom  of  God  as  an  inward  change  requiring  to  be 
spread  over  an  immense  time,  and  coming  about  by 
natural  means  and  gradual  growth,  not  suddenly, 
miraculously.  Jesus  compares  the  kingdom  of  God 
to  a  grain  of  mustard  seed  and  to  a  handful  of  leaven. 


222       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

He  says  :  "  So  is  the  kingdom  of  God,  as  a  man  may 
cast  seed  in  the  ground,  and  may  go  to  bed  and  get 
up  night  and  day,  and  the  seed  shoots  and  extends 
he  knoweth  not  how." l  Jesus  told  his  disciples, 
moreover,  that  the  good  news  of  the  kingdom  had  to 
be  preached  to  the  whole  world.  The  whole  world 
must  first  be  evangelised,  no  work  of  one  generation, 
but  of  centuries  and  centuries ;  and  then,  but  not  till 
then,  should  the  end,  the  last  day,  the  new  world,  the 
grand  transformation  of  which  Jewish  heads  were  so 
full,  finally  come.  True,  the  disciples  also  make  Jesus 
speak  as  if  he  fancied  this  end  to  be  as  near  as  they 
did.  But  it  is  quite  manifest  that  Jesus  spoke  to 
them,  at  different  times,  of  two  ends :  one,  the  end  of 
the  Jewish  state  and  nation,  which  any  one  who  could 
"  discern  the  signs  of  that  time  "  might  foresee ;  the 
other,  the  end  of  the  world,  the  instatement  of  God's 
kingdom ; — and  that  they  confused  the  two  ends  to- 
gether. Undeniably,  therefore,  Jesus  saw  things  in 
a  way  very  different  from  theirs,  and  much  truer. 
And  if  he  uses  their  materialising  language  and 
imagery,  then,  it  cannot  have  been  because  he  shared 
their  illusions.     Nevertheless,  he  uses  it. 

And  the  more  we  examine  the  whole  language  of 
the  Gospels,  the  more  we  shall  find  it  to  be  not  lan- 
guage all  of  the  speaker's  own,  and  invented  by  him 
for  the  first  time,  but  to  be  full  of  reminiscence  and 
quotation.  How  deeply  all  the  speakers'  minds  are 
governed  by  the  contents  of  one  or  two  chapters  in 
Daniel,  everybody  knows.     It  is  impossible  to  under- 

1  Mark  iv.  26,  27. 


i.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  223 

stand  anything  of  the  New  Testament,  without  bearing 
in  mind  that  the  main  pivot,  on  which  all  that  is  said 
turns,  is  supplied  by  half  a  dozen  verses  of  Daniel. 
"  The  God  of  heaven  shall  set  up  a  kingdom  which 
shall  never  be  destroyed,  and  shall  stand  for  ever. 
There  shall  be  a  time  of  trouble,  such  as  never  was 
since  there  was  a  nation  even  to  that  time.  I  beheld, 
till  the  thrones  were  cast  down,  and  the  Ancient  of 
days  did  sit;  and,  behold,  one  like  the  Son  of  man 
came  with  the  clouds  of  heaven,  and  came  to  the 
Ancient  of  days;  the  judgment  was  set  and  the  books 
were  opened.  And  many  of  them  that  sleep  in  the 
dust  of  the  earth  shall  awake,  some  to  everlasting  life, 
and  some  to  shame  and  everlasting  contempt." l  The 
language  of  this  group  of  texts,  I  say,  governs  the 
whole  language  of  the  New  Testament  speakers.  The 
disciples  use  it  literally,  Jesus  uses  it  as  poetry.  But 
all  use  it. 

Those  texts  from  Daniel  almost  every  reader  of  the 
Bible  knows.  But  unless  a  man  has  an  exceedingly 
close  acquaintance  with  the  prophets,  he  can  have  no 
notion,  I  think,  how  very  much  in  the  speeches  of 
Jesus  is  not  original  language  of  his  own,  but  is  lan- 
guage of  the  Old  Testament, — the  religious  language 
on  which  both  he  and  his  hearers  had  been  nourished, 
— adopted  by  Jesus,  and  with  a  sense  of  his  own  com- 
municated to  it.  There  is  hardly  a  trait  in  the  great 
apocalyptic  speech  of  the  twenty-fourth  chapter  of  St. 
Matthew,  which  has  not  its  original  in  some  prophet. 
Even  where  the  scope  of  Jesus  is  most  profoundly 

1  Dan.  ii.  44 ;  xii.  1,  2  ;  vii.  9,  10,  13. 


224       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

new  and  his  own,  his  phrase  is  still,  as  far  as  may  be, 
old.  In  the  institution  of  the  Lord's  Supper  his  new 
covenant  is  a  phrase  from  the  admirable  and  forward- 
pointing  prophecy  in  the  thirty-first  chapter  of  Jere- 
miah.1 The  covenant  in  my  Hood  points  to  Exodus,2 
and  probably,  also,  to  an  expression  in  that  strange 
but  then  popular  medley,  the  book  of  Zechariah.3 
These  phrases,  familiar  to  himself  and  to  his  hearers, 
Jesus  willingly  adopted. 

But  if  we  confine  to  the  Old  Testament  alone  our 
search  for  parallel  passages,  we  shall  have  a  quite 
insufficient  notion  of  the  extent  to  which  the  language 
of  Jesus  is  not  his  own  original  language,  but  language 
and  images  adopted  from  what  was  current  at  the 
time.  It  is  this  which  gives  such  pre-eminent  value 
to  the  Book  of  Enoch.  That  book, — quoted,  as  every 
one  will  remember,  in  the  Epistle  of  Jude,4 — explains 
what  would  certainly  appear,  if  we  had  not  this 
explanation,  to  be  an  enlargement  and  heightening 
by  Jesus,  in  speaking  about  the  end  of  the  world,  of 
the  materialistic  data  furnished  by  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. For  if  he  thus  added  to  them,  it  may  be  said, 
he  must  surely  have  taken  them  literally.  But  the 
Book  of  Enoch  exhibits  just  the  farther  stage  reached 
by  these  data,  between  the  earlier  decades  of  the 
second  century  before  Christ  when  the  Book  of 
Daniel  was  written,  and  the  later  decades  to  which 
belongs  the  Book  of  Enoch.  And  just  this  farther 
growth  of  Messianic  language  and  imagery  it  was, 

1  Verses  31-34.  2  Exod.  xxiv.  8. 

3  Zech.  ix.  11.  4  Verse  14. 


i.]         A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.       225 

with  which  the  minds  of  the  contemporaries  of  Jesus 
were  familiar.  And  in  speaking  to  them  Jesus  had 
to  deal  with  this  familiarity.  Uncanonical,  therefore, 
though  the  Book  of  Enoch  be, — for  it  came  too  late,  and 
perhaps  contains  things  too  strange,  for  admission  into 
the  Canon, — it  is  full  of  interest,  and  every  one  should 
read  it.  The  Hebrew  original  and  the  Greek  version, 
as  is  well  known,  are  lost  •  but  the  book  passed  into 
the  iEthiopic  Bible,  and  an  .ZEthiopic  manuscript  of 
it  was  brought  to  this  country  from  Abyssinia  by 
Bruce,  the  traveller.  The  first  translator  and  editor 
of  it,  Archbishop  Laurence,  did  his  work,  Orientalists 
say,  imperfectly,  and  the  English  version  cannot  be 
trusted.  There  is  an  excellent  German  version ;  but 
I  wish  that  the  Bishop  of  Gloucester  and  Bristol,  who 
is,  I  believe,  an  iEthiopic  scholar,  would  give  us  the 
book  correctly  in  English. 

The  Book  of  Enoch  has  the  names  and  terms 
which  are  already  familiar  to  us  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment :  Head  or  Ancient  of  days,  Son  of  man,  Son  of 
God,  Messiah.  It  has  in  frequent  use  a  designation 
for  God,  the  Lord  of  Sjririts,  and  designations  for  the 
Messiah,  the  Chosen  One,  the  Just  One,  which  we  come 
upon  in  the  New  Testament,1  but  which  the  New 
Testament  did  not,  apparently,  get  from  the  Old. 
It  has  the  angels  accompanying  the  Son  of  Man 
to  judgment,  and  the  Son  of  Man  "  sitting  on 
the  throne  of  his  glory."  It  has,  again  and  again, 
the  well-known  phrase  of  the  New  Testament :   the 

1  The  Father  of  Spirits  in  Hebrews  xii.  9  ;  the  Chosen  One  in 
Luke  xxiii.  35  ;  the  Just  One  in  Acts  xxii.  14. 

VOL.  VII.  Q 


226       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUECH  AND  RELIGION.  [r. 

day  of  judgment ;  it  has  its  outer  darkness  and  its 
hell-fire.     It  has  its  beautiful  expression,  children  of 
light.    These  additions  to  the  Old  Testament  language 
had  passed,  when  Jesus  Christ  came,  into  the  religion 
of  the  time.     He  did  not  create  them,  but  he  found 
them  and  used  them.     He  employed,  as  sanctions  of 
his  doctrine,  his  contemporaries'  ready-made  notions 
of  hell  and   judgment,  just   as   Socrates  did.      He 
talked  of  the  outer  darkness  and  the  unquenchable 
fire,  as    Socrates  talked  of   the  rivers  of   Tartarus. 
And  often,  when  Jesus  used  phrases  which  now  seem 
to  us  to  be  his  own,  he  was  adopting  phrases  made 
current  by  the  Book  of  Enoch.     When  he  said  :  "  It 
were  better  for  that  man  he  had  never  been  born ; " 
when  he  said :    "  Rejoice   because   your  names   are 
written  in  heaven;"  when  he  said:  "Their  angels 
do  always  behold  the  face  of  my  Father  which  is  in 
heaven ; "  when  he  said  :  "  The  brother  shall  deliver 
up  the  brother  to  death  and  the  father  the  child ; " 
when  he  said  :  "  Then  shall  the  righteous  shine  forth 
as  the  sun  in  the  kingdom  of  their  Father,"  he  was 
remembering  the  Book  of  Enoch.     When  he  said : 
"Tell  it  to  the  church;"    when   he  said   to  Peter: 
"  Thou  art  Peter,  and  upon  this  rock  will  I  build  my 
church,  and  the  gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail  against 
it," — expressions  which,  because  of  the  word  church, 
some  reject,  and  others  make  the  foundation  for  the 
most  illusory  pretensions, — Jesus  was  but  recalling 
the  Book  of  Enoch.    For  in  that  book  the  expression, 
the  company  or  congregation  (in  Greek  ecclesia)  of  the 
just  or  righteous, — of  the  destined  rulers  of  the  coming 


i.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  227 

kingdom  of  the  saints, — has  become  a  consecrated 
phrase.  The  Messiah,  the  founder  of  that  kingdom, 
is  the  Just  One ;  "  the  congregation  of  the  just "  are 
those  who  follow  the  Just  One,  the  Just  One's  com- 
pany or  ecdesia.  When  Peter,  therefore,  made  his 
ardent  declaration  of  faith,  Jesus  answered:  "Eock 
is  thy  name,  and  on  this  rock  will  I  build  my  com- 
pany, and  the  power  of  death  shall  not  prevail  against 
it."  Behold  at  its  source  the  colossal  inscription 
round  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's  :  Tu  es  Petrus,  et  super 
hanc  yetram  cediftcabo  ecdesiam  meam  ! 

The  practical  lesson  to  be  drawn  from  all  this  is, 
that  we  should  avoid  violent  revolution  in  the  words 
and  externals  of  religion.  Profound  sentiments  are 
connected  with  them ;  they  are  aimed  at  the  highest 
good,  however  imperfectly  apprehended.  Their  form 
often  gives  them  beauty,  the  associations  which  cluster 
around  them  give  them  always  pathos  and  solemnity. 
They  are  to  be  used  as  poetry ;  while  at  the  same 
time  to  purge  and  raise  our  view  of  that  ideal  at 
which  they  are  aimed,  should  be  our  incessant  endea- 
vour. Else  the  use  of  them  is  mere  dilettanteism. 
We  should  seek,  therefore,  to  use  them  as  Jesus  did. 
How  freely  Jesus  himself  used  them,  we  see.  And 
yet  what  a  difference  between  the  meaning  he  put 
upon  them  and  the  meaning  put  upon  them  by  the 
Jews  !  In  how  general  a  sense  alone  can  it  with  truth 
be  said,  that  he  and  even  his  disciples  had  the  same 
aspirations,  the  same  final  aim  !  How  imperfectly 
did  his  disciples  apprehend  him  ;  how  imperfectly 
must  they  have  reported  him  !     But  the  result  has 


228       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

justified  his  way  of  proceeding.  For  while  he  carried 
with  him,  so  far  as  was  possible,  his  disciples,  and  the 
world  after  them,  and  all  who  even  now  see  him 
through  the  eyes  of  those  first  generations,  he  yet 
also  marked  his  own  real  meaning  so  indelibly,  that 
it  shows  and  shines  clearly  out,  to  satisfy  all  whom, 
— as  time  goes  on,  and  experience  widens,  and  more 
things  are  known, — the  old  imperfect  apprehension 
dissatisfies.  And  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  a 
rejection  of  all  the  poetry  of  popular  religion  is  neces- 
sary or  advisable  now,  any  more  than  when  Jesus 
came.  But  it  is  an  aim  which  may  well  indeed  be  pur- 
sued with  enthusiasm,  to  make  the  true  meaning  of 
Jesus,  in  using  that  poetry,  emerge  and  prevail.  For 
the  immense  pathos,  so  perpetually  enlarged  upon,  of 
his  life  and  death,  does  really  culminate  here :  that 
Christians  have  so  profoundly  misunderstood  him. 

And  perhaps  I  may  seem  to  have  said  in  this  essay 
a  great  deal  about  what  was  merely  poetry  to  Jesus, 
but  too  little  about  what  was  his  real  meaning.  What 
this  was,  however,  I  have  tried  to  bring  out  elsewhere. 
Yet  for  fear,  from  my  silence  about  it  here,  this  essay 
should  seem  to  want  due  balance,  let  me  end  with 
what  a  man  who  writes  it  down  for  himself,  and 
meditates  on  it,  and  entitles  it  Christ's  religion,  will 
not,  perhaps,  go  far  wrong.  It  is  but  a  series  of  well- 
known  sayings  of  Jesus  himself,  as  the  Gospels  deliver 
them  to  us.  But  by  putting  them  together  in  the 
following  way,  and  by  connecting  them,  we  enable 
ouselves,  I  think,  to  understand  better  both  what 
Jesus  himself  meant,  and  how  his  disciples  came  with 


I.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  229 

ease, — taking  the  sayings  singly  and  interpreting  them 
by  the  light  of  their  preconceptions, — to  mistake 
them.  We  must  begin,  surely,  with  that  wherewith 
both  he  and  they  began ; — with  that  wherewith 
Christianity  itself  begins,  and  wherein  it  ends  :  "  the 
kingdom  of  God." 

The  time  is  fulfilled  and  the  kingdom  of  God  is  at 
hand  !  change  the  inner  man  and  believe  the  good  news  ! 

He  that  believeth  hath  eternal  life.  He  that  heareth 
my  word,  and  believeth  him  that  sent  me,  hath  eternal 
life,  and  cometh  not  into  judgment,  but  hath  passed  from 
death  to  life.  Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you,  The  hour 
cometh  and  now  is,  ivhen  the  dead  shall  hear  the  voice  of 
the  Son  of  God,  and  they  that  hear  shall  live. 

I  am  come  forth  from  God  and  am  here,  for  I  have 
not  come  of  myself,  but  he  sent  me.  No  man  can  come 
unto  me  except  the  Father  that  sent  me  draw  him  ;  and  I 
will  raise  him  up  in  the  last  day.  He  that  is  of  God 
heareth  the  ivords  of  God ;  my  doctrine  is  not  mine  but 
his  that  sent  me.  He  that  receiveth  me  receiveth  him  that 
sent  me. 

And  why  call  ye  me  Lord,  Lord,  and  do  not  what  I 
say  ?  If  ye  knoiv  these  things,  happy  are  ye  if  ye  do 
them.  Cleanse  that  which  is  within ;  the  evil  thoughts 
from  within,  from  the  heart,  they  defile  the  man.  And 
why  seest  thou  the  mote  that  is  in  thy  brother's  eye,  but 
perceivest  not  the  beam  that  is  in  thine  own  eye  ?  Take 
heed  to  yourselves  against  insincerity  ;  God  knoweth  your 
hearts;  blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall  see  God/ 
Come  unto  me,  all  that  labour  and  are  heavy-burdened, 


230       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

and  I  will  give  you  rest.  Take  my  yoke  upon  you,  and 
learn  of  me  that  I  am  mild  and  lowly  in  heart,  and  ye 
shall  find  rest  unto  your  souls.  For  my  yoke  is  kindly, 
and  my  burden  light. 

I  am  the  bread  of  life ;  he  that  comelh  to  me  shall 
never  hunger,  and  he  that  believeth  on  me  shall  never 
thirst.  I  am  the  living  bread  ;  as  the  living  Father  sent 
me,  and  I  live  by  the  Father,  so  he  that  eateth  me,  even 
he  shall  live  by  me.  It  is  the  spirit  that  maketh  live,  the 
flesh  profiteth  nothing  ;  the  words  which  I  have  said  unto 
you,  they  are  spirit  and  they  are  life.  If  a  man  keep  my 
word,  he  shall  never  see  death.  My  sheep  hear  my  voice, 
and  I  know  them,  and  they  follow  me,  and  I  give  unto 
them  eternal  life,  and  they  shall  never  perish. 

If  a  man  serve  me,  let  him  follow  me  ;  and  where  I 
am,  there  shall  also  my  servant  be.  Whosoever  doth  not 
carry  his  cross  and  come  after  me,  cannot  be  my  disciple. 
If  any  man  will  come  after  me,  let  him  renounce  himself, 
and  take  up  his  cross  daily,  and  follow  me.  For  ivhoso- 
ever  will  save  his  life  shall  lose  it ;  but  whosoever  shall 
lose  his  life  for  my  sake  and  the  sake  of  the  good  news, 
the  same  shall  save  it.  For  what  is  a  man  profited,  if 
he  gain  the  whole  world,  but  lose  himself,  be  mulcted  of 
himself  %  Therefore  doth  my  Father  love  me,  because  I 
lay  down  my  life  that  I  may  take  it  again.  A  new  com- 
mandment give  I  unto  you,  that  ye  love  one  another. 
The  Son  of  man  came  not  to  be  served  but  to  serve,  and 
to  give  his  life  a  ransom  for  many. 

I  am  the  resurrection  and  the  life ;  he  that  believeth 
on  me,  though  he  die,  shall  live  ;  and  he  that  liveth  and 
believeth  on  me  shall  never  die.     I  am  come  that  ye  might 


I.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  231 

have  life,  and  that  ye  might  have  it  more  abundantly.  I 
cast  out  devils  and  I  do  cures  to-day  and  to-morrow  ;  and 
the  third  day  I  shall  be  'perfected.  Yet  a  little  while,  and 
the  world  seeth  me  no  mare  ;  but  ye  see  me,  because  I  live 
and  ye  shall  live.  If  ye  keep  my  commandments  ye  shall 
abide  in  my  love,  like  as  I  have  kept  my  Father's  command- 
ments and  abide  in  his  love.  He  that  loveth  me  shall  be 
loved  of  my  Father,  and  I  will  love  him,  and  will  manifest 
myself  to  him.  If  a  man  love  me,  he  will  keep  my  word, 
and  my  Father  will  love  him,  and  ive  w'dl  come  unto  him, 
and  make  our  abode  with  him. 

I  am  the  good  shepherd ;  the  good  shepherd  lays 
down  his  life  for  the  sheep.  And  other  sheep  I  have, 
which  are  not  of  this  fold  ;  them  also  must  I  bring, 
and  they  shall  be  one  flock,  one  shepherd.  Fear  not,  little 
flock,  for  it  is  your  Father's  good  pleasure  to  give  you  the 
kingdom. 

My  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world ;  the  kingdom  of 
God  cometh  not  with  observation  ;  behold,  the  kingdom  of 
God  is  within  you/  Whereunto  shall  I  liken  the  kingdom 
of  God  ?  It  is  like  a  grain  of  mustard  seed,  ivhich  a  man 
took  and  cast  into  his  garden,  and  it  grew,  and  waxed  a 
great  tree,  and  the  foivls  of  the  air  lodged  in  the  branches 
of  it.  It  is  like  leaven,  which  a  woman  took,  and  hid  in 
three  measures  of  meal,  till  the  whole  ivas  leavened.  So 
is  the  kingdom  of  God,  as  a  man  may  cast  seed  in  the 
ground,  and  may  go  to  bed  and  get  up  night  and  day,  and 
the  seed  shoots  and  extends  he  knoweth  not  how. 

And  this  good  news  of  the  kingdom  shall  be  preached 
in  the  whole  world,  for  a  witness  to  all  nations ;  and  then 
shall  the  end  come. 


232       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.  [i. 

With  such  a  construction  in  his  thoughts  to  govern 
his  use  of  it,  Jesus  loved  and  freely  adopted  the 
common  wording  and  imagery  of  the  popular  Jewish 
religion.  In  dealing  with  the  popular  religion  in 
which  we  have  been  ourselves  bred,  we  may  the  more 
readily  follow  his  example,  inasmuch  as,  though  all 
error  has  its  side  of  moral  danger,  yet,  evidently,  the 
misconception  of  their  religion  by  Christians  has  pro- 
duced no  such  grave  moral  perversion  as  we  see  to 
have  been  produced  in  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  by 
their  misconception  of  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. The  fault  of  popular  Christianity  as  an  en- 
deavour after  righteousness  by  Jesus  Christ  is  not,  like 
the  fault  of  popular  Judaism  as  an  endeavour  after 
salvation  by  righteousness,  first  and  foremost  a  moral 
fault.  It  is,  much  more,  an  intellectual  one.  But  it 
is  not  on  that  account  insignificant.  Dr.  Mozley 
urges,  that  "  no  inquiry  is  obligatory  upon  religious 
minds  in  matters  of  the  supernatural  and  miraculous," 
because,  says  he,  though  "the  human  mind  must 
refuse  to  submit  to  anything  contrary  to  moral  sense 
in  Scripture,"  yet,  "  there  is  no  moral  question  raised 
by  the  fact  of  a  miracle,  nor  does  a  supernatural 
doctrine  challenge  any  moral  resistance."  As  if  there 
were  no  possible  resistance  to  religious  doctrines,  but 
a  resistance  on  the  ground  of  their  immorality  !  As 
if  intellectual  resistance  to  them  counted  for  nothing  ! 
The  objections  to  popular  Christianity  are  not  moral 
objections,  but  intellectual  revolt  against  its  demon- 
strations by  miracle  and  metaphysics.  To  be  in- 
tellectually convinced  of  a  thing's  want  of  conformity 


I.]  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PARALLEL.  233 

to  truth  and  fact  is  surely  an  insuperable  obstacle  to 
receiving  it,  even  though  there  be  no  moral  obstacle 
added.  And  no  moral  advantages  of  a  doctrine  can 
avail  to  save  it,  in  presence  of  the  intellectual  con- 
viction of  its  want  of  conformity  with  truth  and  fact. 
And  if  the  want  of  conformity  exists,  it  is  sure  to  be 
one  day  found  out.  "Things  are  what  they  are,  and 
the  consequences  of  them  will  be  what  they  will  be;" 
and  one  inevitable  consequence  of  a  thing's  want  of 
conformity  with  truth  and  fact  is,  that  sooner  or  later 
the  human  mind  perceives  it.  And  whoever  thinks 
that  the  ground-belief  of  Christians  is  true  and  indis- 
pensable, but  that  in  the  account  they  give  of  it,  and 
of  the  reasons  for  holding  it,  there  is  a  want  of  con- 
formity with  truth  and  fact,  may  well  desire  to  find 
a  better  account  and  better  reasons,  and  to  prepare 
the  way  for  their  admission  and  for  their  acquiring 
some  strength  and  consistency  in  men's  minds,  against 
the  day  when  the  old  means  of  reliance  fail. 

But,  meanwhile,  the  ground-belief  of  all  Christians, 
whatever  account  they  may  give  to  themselves  of  its 
source  and  sanctions,  is  in  itself  an  indestructible 
basis  of  fellowship.  Whoever  believes  the  final 
triumph  of  Christianity,  the  Christianisation  of  the 
world,  to  have  all  the  necessity  and  grandeur  of  a 
natural  law,  will  never  lack  a  bond  of  profound  sym- 
pathy with  popular  religion.  Compared  with  agree- 
ment and  difference  on  this  point,  agreement  and 
difference  on  other  points  seem  trifling.  To  believe 
that,  whoever  are  ignorant  that  righteousness  is  salva- 
tion, "the  Eternal  shall  have  them  in  derision;"  to 


234       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION. 


[I. 


believe  that,  whatever  may  be  the  substitute  offered 
for  the  righteousness  of  Jesus,  a  substitute,  however 
sparkling,  yet  "whosoever  drinketh  of  this  water 
shall  thirst  again ; "  to  desire  truly  "  to  have  strength 
to  escape  all  the  things  which  shall  come  to  pass  and 
to  stand  before  the  Son  of  Man," — is  the  one 
authentic  mark  and  seal  of  the  household  of  faith. 
Those  who  share  in  this  belief  and  in  this  desire  are 
fellow-citizens  of  the  "city  which  hath  foundations." 
Whosoever  shares  in  them  not,  is,  or  is  in  danger  of 
any  day  becoming,  a  wanderer,  as  St.  Augustine  says, 
through  "the  waste  places  fertile  in  sorrow;"  a 
wanderer  "seeking  rest  and  finding  none."  In  all 
things  I  sought  rest ;  then  the  Creator  of  all  things  gave 
me  commandment  and  said :  Let  thy  dwelling  be  in  Jacob, 
and  thine  inheritance  in  Israel !  And  so  was  I  established 
in  Sion ;  likewise  in  the  beloved  city  he  gave  me  rest,  and 
in  Jerusalem  was  my  'power. 


II. 

BISHOP  BUTLEB  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.1 

I. 

In  Scotland,  I  imagine,  you  have  in  your  philosophical 
studies  small  experience  of  the  reverent  devotion  for- 
merly, at  any  rate,  paid  at  Oxford  to  text-books  in 
philosophy,  such  as  the  Sermons  of  Bishop  Butler,  or 
the  Ethics  of  Aristotle.  Your  students  in  philosophy 
have  always  read  pretty  widely,  and  have  not  con- 
centrated themselves,  as  we  at  Oxford  used  to  con- 
centrate ourselves,  upon  one  or  two  great  books. 
However,  in  your  study  of  the  Bible  you  got  abundant 
experience  of  our  attitude  of  mind  towards  our  two 
philosophers.  Your  text-book  was  right ;  there  were 
no  mistakes  there.  If  there  was  anything  obscure, 
anything  hard  to  be  comprehended,  it  was  your 
ignorance  which  was  in  fault,  your  failure  of  compre- 

1  The  two  following  discourses  were  delivered  as  lectures  at 
the  Edinburgh  Philosophical  Institution.  They  had  the  form, 
therefore,  of  an  address  to  hearers,  not  readers  ;  and  they  are 
printed  in  that  form  in  which  they  were  delivered. 


236       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

hension.  Just  such  was  our  mode  of  dealing  with 
Butler's  Sermons  and  Aristotle's  Ethics.  Whatever 
was  hard,  whatever  was  obscure,  the  text-book  was  all 
right,  and  our  understandings  were  to  conform  them- 
selves to  it.  What  agonies  of  puzzle  has  Butler's 
account  of  self-love,  or  Aristotle's  of  the  intellectual 
virtues,  caused  to  clever  undergraduates  and  to  clever 
tutors ;  and  by  what  feats  of  astonishing  explanation, 
astonishingly  acquiesced  in,  were  those  agonies  calmed ! 
Yet  the  true  solution  of  the  difficulty  was  in  some 
cases,  undoubtedly,  that  our  author,  as  he  stood,  was 
not  right,  not  satisfactory.  As  to  secular  authors,  at 
any  rate,  it  is  indisputable  that  their  works  are  to  be 
regarded  as  contributions  to  human  knowledge,  and 
not  more.  It  is  only  experience  which  assures  us 
that  even  the  poetry  and  artistic  form  of  certain 
epochs  has  not,  in  fact,  been  improved  upon,  and  is, 
therefore,  classical.  But  the  same  experience  assures 
us  that  in  all  matters  of  knowledge  properly  so  called, 
— above  all,  of  such  difficult  knowledge  as  are  ques 
tions  of  mind  and  of  moral  philosophy, — any  writer 
in  past  times  must  be  on  many  points  capable  of 
correction,  much  of  what  he  says  must  be  capable  of 
being  put  more  truly,  put  clearer.  Yet  we  at  Oxford 
used  to  read  our  Aristotle  or  our  Butler  with  the 
same  absolute  faith  in  the  classicality  of  their  matter 
as  in  the  classicality  of  Homer's  form. 

The  time  inevitably  arrives,  to  people  who  think  at 
all  seriously,  when,  as  their  experience  widens,  they  ask 
themselves  what  they  are  really  to  conclude  about  the 
masters  and  the  works  thus  authoritatively  imposed 


ii.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  237 

upon  them  in  their  youth.  Above  all,  of  a  man  like 
Butler  one  is  sure  to  ask  oneself  this, — an  Englishman, 
a  Christian,  a  modern,  whose  circumstances  and  point 
of  view  we  can  come  pretty  well  to  know  and  to  under- 
stand, and  whose  works  we  can  be  sure  of  possessing  just 
as  he  published  them  and  meant  them  to  stand  before 
us.  And  Butler  deserves  that  one  should  regard  him 
very  attentively,  both  on  his  own  account,  and  also 
because  of  the  immense  and  confident  laudation  be- 
stowed upon  his  writings.  Whether  he  completely 
satisfies  us  or  no,  a  man  so  profoundly  convinced  that 
"virtue, — the  law  of  virtue  written  on  our  hearts, — 
is  the  law  we  are  born  under  ; "  a  man  so  staunch  in 
his  respectful  allegiance  to  reason,  a  man  who  says  : 
"  I  express  myself  with  caution,  lest  I  should  be  mis- 
taken to  vilify  reason,  which  is  indeed  the  only 
faculty  we  have  wherewith  to  judge  concerning  any- 
thing, even  revelation  itself;"  a  man,  finally,  so 
deeply  and  evidently  in  earnest,  filled  with  so  awful 
a  sense  of  the  reality  of  things  and  of  the  madness  of 
self-deception :  "  Things  and  actions  are  what  they 
are,  and  the  consequences  of  them  will  be  what  they 
will  be  ;  why  then  should  we  desire  to  be  deceived  1 " 
— such  a  man,  even  if  he  was  somewhat  despotically 
imposed  upon  our  youth,  may  yet  well  challenge  the 
most  grave  consideration  from  our  mature  manhood. 
And  even  did  we  fail  to  give  it  willingly,  the  strong 
consenting  eulogy  upon  his  achievements  would  extort 
it  from  us.  It  is  asserted  that  his  three  Sermons  on 
Human  Nature  are,  in  the  department  of  moral  philo- 
sophy, "  perhaps  the  three  most  valuable  essays  that 


238       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

were  ever  published."  They  are  this,  because  they 
contain  his  famous  doctrine  of  conscience, — a  doctrine 
which,  being  in  those  sermons  "  explained  according 
to  the  strict  truth  of  our  mental  constitution,  is  irre- 
sistible." Butler  is  therefore  said,  in  the  words  of 
another  of  his  admirers,  "  by  pursuing  precisely  the 
same  mode  of  reasoning  in  the  science  of  morals  as 
his  great  predecessor  Newton  had  done  in  the  system 
of  nature,  to  have  formed  and  concluded  a  happy 
alliance  between  faith  and  philosophy."  And  again  : 
"  Metaphysic,  which  till  then  had  nothing  to  support 
it  but  mere  abstraction  or  shadowy  speculation, 
Butler  placed  on  the  firm  basis  of '  observation  and 
experiment."  And  Sir  James  Mackintosh  says  of  the 
Sermons  in  general :  "  In  these  sermons  Butler  has 
taught  truths  more  capable  of  being  exactly  dis- 
tinguished from  the  doctrines  of  his  predecessors, 
more  satisfactorily  established  by  him,  more  compre- 
hensively applied  to  particulars,  more  rationally  con- 
nected with  each  other,  and  therefore  more  worthy  of 
the  name  of  discovery,  than  any  with  which  we  are 
acquainted,  if  we  ought  not,  with  some  hesitation,  to 
except  the  first  steps  of  the  Grecian  philosophers 
towards  a  theory  of  morals."  The  Analogy  Mackin- 
tosh calls  "the  most  original  and  profound  work 
extant  in  any  language  on  the  philosophy  of  religion." 
Such  are  Butler's  claims  upon  our  attention. 

It  is  true,  there  are  moments  when  the  philosophy 
of  religion  and  the  theory  of  morals  are  not  popular 
subjects,  when  men  seem  disposed  to  put  them  out  of 
their  minds  to  shelve  them  as  sterile,  to  try  whether 


ii.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  239 

they  cannot  get  on  without  them.  Mr.  John  Morley, 
in  that  interesting  series  of  articles  on  Diderot  which 
he  has  lately  published  in  the  Fortnightly  Bevieiv,  points 
out  how  characteristic  and  popular  in  the  French 
Encyclopaedia  was  its  authors'  "earnest  enthusiasm 
for  all  the  purposes,  intents,  and  details  of  productive 
industry,  for  physical  science  and  the  practical  arts;" 
how  this  was  felt  to  be  a  welcome  relief  to  people  tired 
of  metaphysical  and  religious  discussions.  "Intel- 
lectually," says  he,  "  it  was  the  substitution  of  interest 
in  things  for  interest  in  words."  And  undoubtedly 
there  are  times  when  a  reaction  of  this  sort  sets  in, 
when  an  interest  in  the  processes  of  productive  in- 
dustry, in  physical  science  and  the  practical  arts,  is 
called  an  interest  in  things,  and  an  interest  in  morals 
and  religion  is  called  an  interest  in  words.  People  really 
do  seem  to  imagine  that  in  seeing  and  learning  how 
buttons  are  made,  or  papier  mdche',  they  shall  find 
some  new  and  untried  vital  resource ;  that  our  pros- 
pects from  this  sort  of  study  have  something  peculiarly 
hopeful  and  animating  about  them,  and  that  the  posi- 
tive and  practical  thing  to  do  is  to  give  up  religion 
and  turn  to  them.  However,  as  Butler  says  in  his 
sermon  on  Self -Deceit:  "Keligion  is  true,  or  it  is 
not.  If  it  be  not,  there  is  no  reason  for  any  concern 
about  it."  If,  however,  it  be  true,  it  is  important, 
and  then  it  requires  attention ;  as  in  the  same  sermon 
Butler  says,  in  his  serious  way:  "We  cannot  be 
acquainted  with,  nor  in  any  propriety  of  speech  be 
said  to  know,  anything  but  what  we  attend  to."  And 
he  speaks  of  the  disregard  of  men  for  what  he  calls 


240       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUKCH  AND  KELIGION.         [n. 

"  the  reproofs  and  instructions  "  that  they  meet  with 
in  religion  and  morals,  as  a  disregard  of  what  is 
"  exactly  suitable  to  the  state  of  their  own  mind  and 
the  course  of  their  behaviour;" — more  suitable,  he 
would  certainly  have  thought,  than  being  instructed 
how  buttons  are  made,  or  papier  mdcM.  I  am  entirely 
of  Butler's  opinion.  And  though  the  posture  of  mind 
of  a  good  many  cleyer  persons  at  the  present  day  is 
that  of  the  French  Encyclopedists,  yet  here  in  the 
capital  of  Scotland,  of  that  country  which  has  been 
such  a  stronghold  of  what  I  call  "  Hebraism,"  of  deep 
and  ardent  occupation  with  righteousness  and  religion, 
you  will  not  complain  of  my  taking  for  my  subject  so 
eminent  a  doctor  in  the  science  of  these  matters  as 
Butler,  and  one  who  is  said  to  have  established  his 
doctrine  so  firmly  and  impregnably.  I  can  conceive 
no  claim  more  great  to  advance  on  a  man's  behalf, 
and  none  which  it  more  behoves  us  to  test  accurately. 
Let  us  attempt  to  satisfy  ourselves  how  far,  in  But- 
ler's case,  the  claim  is  solid. 

2. 

But  first  we  should  have  before  our  minds  a  notion 
of  the  life  and  circumstances  of  the  man  with  whose 
works  we  are  going  to  deal.  Joseph  Butler  was  born 
on  the  18th  of  May  1692,  at  Wantage  in  Berkshire. 
His  father  was  a  retired  tradesman,  a  Dissenter,  and 
the  son  was  sent  to  a  Dissenting  school.  Even  before 
he  left  school,  he  had  his  first  correspondence  with 
Dr.  Samuel  Clarke  on  certain  points  in  Clarke's 
Demonstration  of  the  Being  and  Attributes  of  God,  and 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  241 

he  wrote  to  a  friend  that  he  "  designed  to  make  truth 
the  business  of  his  life."  Dissent  did  not  satisfy 
him.  He  left  the  Presbyterian  body,  to  which  his 
father  belonged,  and  was  entered,  in  1714,  at  Oxford, 
at  Oriel  College.  There  he  formed  a  friendship  with 
Edward  Talbot,  a  Fellow  of  Oriel,  son  of  Bishop 
Talbot,  and  brother  to  the  future  Lord  Chancellor 
Talbot ;  and  this  friendship  determined  the  outward 
course  of  Butler's  life.  It  led  to  his  being  appointed 
preacher  at  the  Rolls  Chapel  in  1719,  the  year  after 
his  ordination  as  priest,  and  when  he  was  only  twenty- 
six  years  old.  There  the  famous  Sermons  were 
preached,  between  1719  and  1726.  Bishop  Talbot 
appointed  him,  in  1722,  to  the  living  of  Haughton, 
in  the  diocese  of  Durham;  and,  in  1725,  transferred 
him  to  the  rich  living  of  Stanhope,  in  the  same  dio- 
cese. After  obtaining  Stanhope,  Butler  resigned,  in 
1726,  his  preachership  at  the  Rolls,  and  published 
his  Fifteen  Sermons.  They  made  no  noise.  It  was 
four  years  before  a  second  edition  of  them  was  re- 
quired. Butler,  however,  had  friends  who  knew  his 
worth,  and  in  1733  he  was  made  chaplain  to  Lord 
Chancellor  Talbot,  in  1736  Clerk  of  the  Closet  to 
Queen  Caroline,  the  wife  of  George  the  Second.  In 
this  year  he  published  the  Analogy.  Queen  Caroline 
died  the  year  afterwards,  and  Butler  returned  to 
Stanhope.  But  Queen  Caroline  had,  before  her 
death,  strongly  recommended  him  to  her  husband; 
and  George  the  Second,  in  1738,  made  him  Bishop  of 
Bristol,  then  the  poorest  of  sees,  with  an  income  of 
but  some  £400  a  year.     About  eighteen  months  after- 

VOL.  VII.  R 


242       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

wards,  Butler  was  appointed  to  the  deanery  of  St. 
Paul's,  when  he  resigned  Stanhope  and  passed  his 
time  between  Bristol  and  London,  acquiring  a  house 
at  Hampstead.  He  attended  the  House  of  Lords 
regularly,  but  took  no  part,  so  far  as  is  known,  in  the 
debates.  In  1746  he  was  made  Clerk  of  the  Closet 
to  the  King,  and  in  1750  he  was  translated  to  the 
great  and  rich  see  of  Durham.  Butler's  health  had 
by  this  time  given  way.  In  1751  he  delivered  his 
first  and  only  charge  to  the  clergy  of  Durham,  the 
famous  charge  upon  the  Use  and  Importance  of  Ex- 
ternal Religion.  But  in  June  1752  he  was  taken  in 
a  state  of  extreme  weakness  to  Bath,  died  there  on 
the  16th  of  June,  and  was  buried  in  his  old  cathedral 
of  Bristol.  When  he  died,  he  was  just  sixty  years  of 
age.     He  was  never  married. 

Such  are,  in  outline,  the  external  facts  of  Butler's 
life  and  history.  To  fill  up  the  outline  for  us  there 
remain  a  very  few  anecdotes,  and  one  or  two 
letters.  Bishop  Philpotts,  of  Exeter,  who  afterwards 
followed  Butler  in  the  living  of  Stanhope,  sought 
eagerly  at  Stanhope  for  some  traditions  of  his  great 
predecessor.  All  he  could  gather  was,  that  Butler 
had  been  much  beloved,  that  he  rode  about  on  a 
black  pony  and  rocle  very  fast,  and  that  he  was 
greatly  pestered  by  beggars  because  of  his  known 
easiness.  But  there  has  been  preserved  Butler's  letter 
to  Sir  Robert  Walpole  on  accepting  the  see  of  Bristol, 
and  a  passage  in  this  letter  is  curious,  as  coming  from 
such  a  man.  He  expresses  his  gratitude  to  the  King, 
and  then  proceeds  thus  : — 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  243 

"  I  know  no  greater  obligation  than  to  find  the  Queen's  con- 
descending goodness  and  kind  intentions  towards  me  transferred 
to  his  Majesty.  Nor  is  it  possible,  while  I  live,  to  be  without 
the  most  grateful  sense  of  his  favour  to  me,  whether  the  effects 
of  it  be  greater  or  less ;  for  this  must,  in  some  measures,  depend 
upon  accident.  Indeed,  the  bishopric  of  Bristol  is  not  very- 
suitable  either  to  the  condition  of  my  fortune  or  the  circum- 
stances, nor,  as  I  should  have  thought,  answerable  to  the  re- 
commendation with  which  I  was  honoured.  But  you  will 
excuse  me,  sir,  if  I  think  of  this  last  with  greater  sensibility 
than  the  conduct  of  affairs  will  admit  of.  But  without  entering 
further  into  detail,  I  desire,  sir,  you  Anil  please  let  his  Majesty 
know  that  I  humbly  accept  this  instance  of  his  favour  with  the 
utmost  possible  gratitude." 

As  one  reads  that  passage,  it  is  impossible  not  to 
have  the  feeling  that  we  are  in  the  somewhat  arid  air 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  Ken  or  Leighton,  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  could  not  have  written  it ;  and 
in  Butler's  own  century  that  survivor  of  the  saints, 
Wilson  of  Sodor  and  Man,  could  not  have  written  it. 
And  indeed  the  peculiar  delicacy  and  loveliness  which 
attaches  to  our  idea  of  a  saint  does  not  belong  to 
Butler.  Nobly  severe  with  himself  he  was,  his  eye 
was  single.  Austerely  just,  he  follows  with  awe-filled 
observance  the  way  of  duty ; — this  is  his  stamp  of 
character.  And  his  liberality  and  his  treatment  of 
patronage,  even  though  we  may  not  find  in  him  the 
delicacy  of  the  saint,  are  yet  thorough  and  admirable 
because  they  are  determined  by  this  character.  He 
said  to  his  secretary:  "I  should  be  ashamed  of 
myself  if  I  could  leave  ten  thousand  pounds  behind 
me."  There  is  a  story  of  a  man  coming  to  him  at 
Durham  with  a  project  for  some  good  work.  The 
plan  struck  Butler's  mind  ;  he  sent  for  his  house- 


244       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUKCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

steward,  and  asked  liim  how  much  money  there 
was  in  his  hands.  The  steward  answered  that  he 
had  five  hundred  pounds.  "  Five  hundred  pounds  ! " 
said  Butler,  "what  a  shame  for  a  bishop  to  have  so 
much  money !  Give  it  away,  give  it  all  to  this 
gentleman  for  his  charitable  plan  ! "  Open  house 
and  plain  living  were  Butler's  rule  at  Durham.  He 
had  long  been  disgusted,  he  said,  with  the  fashionable 
expense  of  time  and  money  in  entertainments,  and 
was  determined  it  should  receive  no  countenance 
from  his  example.  He  writes  to  one  who  congratu- 
lated him  on  his  translation  to  Durham  : — 

1 '  If  one  is  enabled  to  do  a  little  good,  and  to  prefer  worthy 
men,  this  indeed  is  a  valuable  of  life,  and  will  afford  satisfaction 
at  the  close  of  it ;  but  the  station  of  itself  will  in  nowise  answer 
the  trouble  of  it,  and  of  getting  into  new  forms  of  living  ;  I 
mean  in  respect  to  the  peace  and  happiness  of  one's  own  mind, 
for  in  fortune  to  be  sure  it  will. " 

Again  one  has  a  sense,  from  something  in  the 
phraseology  and  mode  of  expression,  that  one  is  in 
the  eighteenth  century ;  but  at  the  same  time  what 
a  perfect  impression  of  integrity  and  simplicity  do 
Butler's  words  leave  !  To  another  congratulator  he 
writes : — 

"I  thank  you  for  your  kind  congratulations,  though  I  am  not 
without  my  doubts  and  fears  how  far  the  occasion  of  them  is  a 
real  subject  of  congratulation  to  me.  Increase  of  fortune  is  in- 
significant to  one  who  thought  he  had  enough  before ;  and  I 
foresee  many  difficulties  in  the  station  I  am  coming  into,  and 
no  advantage  worth  thinking  of,  except  some  greater  power  of 
being  serviceable  to  others  ;  and  whether  this  be  an  advantage 
depends  entirely  on  the  use  one  shall  make  of  it  ;  I  pray  God 
it  may  be  a  good  one.     It  would  be  a  melancholy  thing,  in  the 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GELST.  245 

close  of  life,  to  have  no  reflections  to  entertain  oneself  with  but 
that  one  had  spent  the  revenues  of  the  bishopric  of  Durham  in 
a  sumptuous  course  of  living,  and  enriched  one's  friends  with 
the  promotions  of  it,  instead  of  having  really  set  oneself  to  do 
good,  and  promote  worthy  men  ;  yet  this  right  use  of  fortune 
and  power  is  more  difficult  than  the  generality  of  even  good 
people  think,  and  requires  both  a  guard  upon  oneself,  and  a 
strength  of  mind  to  withstand  solicitations,  greater  (I  wish  I 
may  not  find  it)  than  I  am  master  of. " 

There  are  not  half  a  dozen  of  Butler's  private 
letters  preserved.  It  was  worth  while,  therefore,  to 
quote  his  letter  to  Walpole;  and  it  was  but  just, 
after  quoting  that  letter,  to  quote  this  to  his  con- 
gratulatory 

Like  Bishop  Philpotts,  one  may  well  be  tantalised 
at  not  knowing  more  of  a  man  so  full  of  purpose,  and 
who  has  made  his  mark  so  deeply.  Butler  himself, 
however,  helped  to  baffle  us.  The  codicil  to  his  will, 
made  in  1752,  not  two  months  before  his  death,  con- 
cludes thus : — "  It  is  my  positive  and  exj>ress  will, 
that  all  my  sermons,  letters,  and  papers  whatever, 
which  are  in  a  deal  box,  locked,  directed  to  Dr. 
Forster,  and  now  standing  in  the  little  room  within 
my  library  at  Hampstead,  be  burnt  without  being 
read  by  any  one,  as  soon  as  may  be  after  my  decease." 
His  silent,  inward,  concentrated  nature  pondered  well 
and  decided  what  it  meant  to  give  to  the  world ; — 
gave  it,  and  would  give  no  more.  A  characteristic 
habit  is  mentioned  of  him,  that  he  loved  to  walk 
alone,  and  to  walk  at  night.  He  was  an  immense 
reader.  It  is  said  of  him  that  he  read  every  book  he 
could  lay  his  hands  upon ;  but  it  was  all  digested 
silently,   not  exhibited  in  the  way  of    extract    and 


246       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [n. 

citation.  Unlike  the  seventeenth  century  divines,  he 
hardly  ever  quotes.  As  to  his  tastes  and  habits,  we 
are  informed,  further,  that  he  was  fond  of  religious 
music,  and  took  for  his  under-secretary  an  ex-chorister 
of  St.  Paul's,  that  he  might  play  to  him  upon  the 
organ.  He  liked  building  and  planting,  and  one  of 
his  few  letters  preserved  bears  witness  to  these  tastes, 
and  is  altogether  so  characteristic,  and,  in  the  paucity 
of  records  concerning  Butler,  so  valuable,  that  I  will 
quote  it.  It  is  to  the  Duchess  of  Somerset,  and 
written  in  1751,  just  after  he  had  taken  possession  of 
the  see  of  Durham  : — 

' '  I  had  a  mind  to  see  Auckland  before  I  wrote  to  your 
Grace  ;  and  as  you  take  so  kind  a  part  in  everything  which 
contributes  to  my  satisfaction,  I  am  sure  you  will  be  pleased 
to  hear  that  the  place  is  a  very  agreeable  one,  and  fully 
answering  expectations,  except  that  one  of  the  chief  prospects, 
which  is  very  pretty  (the  river  Wear,  with  hills  much  diver- 
sified rising  above  it),  is  too  bare  of  wood  ;  the  park,  not  much 
amiss  as  to  that,  but  I  am  obliged  to  pale  it  anew  all  round, 
the  old  pale  being  quite  decayed.  This  will  give  an  opportunity, 
with  which  I  am  much  pleased,  to  take  in  forty  or  fifty  acres 
completely  wooded,  though  with  that  enlargement  it  will  scarce 
be  sufficient  for  the  hospitality  of  the  country.  These,  with 
some  little  improvements  and  very  great  repairs,  take  up  my 
leisure  time. 

"  Thus,  madam,  I  seem  to  have  laid  out  a  very  long  life  for 
myself ;  yet,  in  reality,  everything  I  see  puts  me  in  mind  of  the 
shortness  and  uncertainty  of  it :  the  arms  and  inscriptions  of 
my  predecessors,  what  they  did  and  what  they  neglected,  and 
(from  accidental  circumstances)  the  very  place  itself,  and  the 
rooms  I  walk  through  and  sit  in.  And  when  I  consider,  in 
one  view,  the  many  things  of  the  kind  I  have  just  mentioned 
which  I  have  upon  my  hands,  I  feel  the  burlesque  of  being 
employed  in  this  manner  at  my  time  of  life.  But  in  another 
view,  and  taking  in  all  circumstances,  these  things,  as  trifling 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  247 

as  they  may  appear,  no  less  than  things  of  greater  importance, 
seem  to  be  put  upon  me  to  do,  or  at  least  to  begin  ;  whether  I 
am  to  live  to  complete  any  or  all  of  them,  is  not  my  concern." 

With  Butler's  taste  for  building  and  improving  is 
connected  a  notable  incident.     While  at  Bristol  he 
restored  the  episcopal  palace  and  chapel,  and  in  the 
chapel  he  put  up  an  altar-piece,  which  is  described  as 
"of  black  marble,  inlaid  with  a  milk-white  cross  of 
white  marble,  which  is  plain,  and  has  a  good  effect." 
For  those  bare  Hanoverian  times  this  was  a  reredos 
case.     Butler's  cross  excited  astonishment  and  gave 
offence,  and  Lord  Chancellor  Hardwicke  begged  a 
subsequent  Bishop  of  Bristol,  Dr.  Young,  to  have  it 
taken  down.     Young  made  the  excellent  answer,  that 
it  should  never  be  said  that  Bishop  Young  had  pulled 
down  what  Bishop  Butler  had  set  up ;  and  the  cross 
remained  until  the  palace  was  burnt  and  the  marble 
altar-piece  destroyed  in  the  Bristol  riots  in  1831. 
But  the  erection  of  this   cross  was  connected  with 
his  remarks,  in  his  Durham  Charge,  on  the  Use  and 
Importance  of  External  Religion,  and  caused  it  to  be 
reported  that  Butler  had  died  in  the  communion  of 
the  Church  of  Kome.     Pamphleteers  and  newspaper- 
writers  handled  the  topic  in  the  style  which  we  know 
so  well.     Archbishop  Seeker  thought  it  necessary  to 
write  in  denial  of  his  friend's  perversion,  owning,  as 
he  did  so,  that  for  himself  he  wished  the  cross  had 
not  been  put  up.     And  Butler's  accuser  replied,  as 
" Phileleutheros,"    to    Seeker,    that    "such   anecdote 
had  been  given  him,  and  that  he  was  yet  of  opinion 
there  is  not  anything  improbable  in  it,  when  it  is 


248       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [ii. 

considered  that  the  same  prelate  put  up  the  Popish 
insignia  of  the  cross  in  his  chapel,  when  at  Bristol ; 
and  in  his  last  episcopal  charge  has  squinted  very 
much  towards  that  superstition."  Another  writer 
not  only  maintained  that  the  cross  and  the  Durham 
charge  together  "  amounted  to  full  proof  of  a  strong 
attachment  to  the  idolatrous  communion  of  the 
Church  of  Rome,"  but  volunteered  to  account  for 
Butler's  "  tendency  this  way,"  as  he  called  it.  This 
he  did  "from  the  natural  melancholy  and  gloomi- 
ness of  Dr.  Butler's  disposition,  from  his  great  fond- 
ness for  the  lives  of  Romish  saints,  and  their  books 
of  mystic  piety;  from  his  drawing  his  notions  of 
teaching  men  religion,  not  from  the  New  Testament, 
but  from  philosophical  and  political  opinions  of  his 
own;  and,  above  all,  from  his  transition  from  a 
strict  Dissenter  amongst  the  Presbyterians  to  a  rigid 
Churchman,  and  his  sudden  and  unexpected  elevation 
to  great  wealth  and  dignity  in  the  Church."  It  was 
impossible  that  Butler  should  be  understood  by  the 
ordinary  religious  world  of  his  own  day.  But  no 
intelligent  man  can  now  read  the  Durham  Charge 
without  feeling  that  its  utterer  lives  in  a  higher 
world  than  that  in  which  disputes  between  Catholi- 
cism and  Protestantism,  and  questions  of  going  over 
to  Rome,  or  at  any  rate  "squinting  very  much 
towards  that  superstition,"  have  their  being.  Butler 
speaks  as  a  man  with  an  awful  sense  of  religion,  yet 
plainly  seeing,  as  he  says,  "the  deplorable  distinc- 
tion" of  his  own  a°re  to  be   "an  avowed  scorn  of 

O 

religion  in  some,  and  a  growing  disregard  to  it  in 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  249 

the  generality."  He  speaks,  with  "the  immoral 
thoughtlessness,  as  he  called  it,  of  the  bulk  of  man- 
kind astounding  and  grieving  his  soul,  and  with  the 
single  desire  "  to  beget  a  practical  sense  of  religion 
upon  their  hearts."  "  The  form  of  religion,"  he  says, 
with  his  invincible  sense  for  reality,  "may  indeed  be 
where  there  is  little  of  the  thing  itself ;  but  the  thing 
itself  cannot  be  preserved  amongst  mankind  without 
the  form."  And  the  form  he  exhorts  to  is  no  more 
than  what  nowadays  all  religious  people  would  think 
matter  of  course  to  be  practised,  and  where  not  prac- 
tised, to  be  enjoined :  family  prayer,  grace  at  meals, 
that  the  clergy  should  visit  their  parishioners  and 
should  lay  hold  of  natural  opportunities,  such  as  con- 
firmation or  sickness,  for  serious  conversation  with 
them  and  for  turning  their  thoughts  towards  religion. 

Butler  met  John  Wesley,  and  one  would  like  to 
have  a  full  record  of  what  passed  at  such  a  meeting. 
But  all  that  we  know  is  this  :  that  when  Butler  was 
at  Bristol,  Wesley,  who  admired  the  Analogy,  and 
who  was  then  preaching  to  the  Kingswood  miners, 
had  an  interview  with  him;  and  that  Butler  "ex- 
pressed his  pleasure  at  the  seriousness  which  Wesley's 
preaching  awakened,  but  blamed  him  for  sanctioning 
that  violent  physical  excitement  which  was  considered 
almost  a  necessary  part  of  the  so-called  new  birth." 

I  have  kept  for  the  last  the  description  we  have 
from  Surtees,  the  historian  of  Durham,  of  Butler's 
person  and  manners  : — 

"  During  the  short  time  that  he  held  the  see,"  says  Surtees, 
"he  conciliated  all  hearts.      In  advanced  years  and  on  the 


250       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUKCH  AND  KELIGION.         [n. 

episcopal  throne,  he  retained  the  same  genuine  modesty  and 
native  sweetness  of  disposition  which  had  distinguished  him 
in  youth  and  in  retirement.  During  the  ministerial  perform- 
ance of  the  sacred  office,  a  divine  animation  seemed  to  pervade 
his  whole  manner,  and  lighted  up  his  pale,  wan  countenance, 
already  marked  with  the  progress  of  disease." 

From  another  source  we  hear  : — 

' '  He  was  of  a  most  reverend  aspect ; — his  face  thin  and 
pale,  but  there  was  a  divine  placidness  in  his  countenance, 
which  inspired  veneration  and  expressed  the  most  benevolent 
mind.  His  white  hair  hung  gracefully  on  his  shoulders,  and 
his  whole  figure  was  patriarchal." 

This  description  would  not  ill  suit  Wesley  himself, 
and  it  may  be  thought,  perhaps,  that  here  at  any 
rate,  if  not  in  the  letter  to  Sir  Kobert  Walpole,  we 
find  the  saint.  And,  doubtless,  where  the  eye  is  so 
single  and  the  thoughts  are  so  chastened  as  they 
were  with  Butler,  the  saintly  character  will  never 
be  far  off.  But  still  the  total  impression  left  by 
Butler  is  not  exactly,  I  repeat,  that  of  a  saint. 

Butler  stood  alone  in  his  time  and  amongst  his 
generation.  Yet  the  most  cursory  reader  can  perceive 
that,  in  his  writings,  there  is  constant  reference  to 
the  controversies  of  his  time,  and  to  the  men  of  his 
generation.  He  himself  has  pointed  this  out  as  a 
possible  cause  of  obscurity.  In  the  preface  to  the 
second  edition  of  his  Sermons  he  says  : — 

"A  subject  may  be  treated  in  a  manner  which  all  along 
supposes  the  reader  acquainted  with  what  has  been  said  upon 
it  both  by  ancient  and  modern  writers,  and  with  what  is  the 
present  state  of  opinion  in  the  world  concerning  such  subject. 
This  will  create  a  difficulty  of  a  very  peculiar  kind,  and  even 
throw  an  obscurity  over  the  whole  before  those  who  are  not 


ii.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  251 

thus  informed  ;  but  those  who  are,  will  be  disposed  to  excuse 
such  a  manner,  and  other  things  of  the  like  kind,  as  a  saving 
of  their  patience. " 

This  reference  to  contemporary  opinion,  if  it  some- 
times occasions  difficulty  in  following  Butler,  makes 
his  treatment  of  his  subject  more  real  and  earnest. 
Nearly  always  he  has  in  mind  something  with  which 
he  has  actually  come  in  conflict.  When  he  recurs  so 
persistently  to  self-love,  he  is  thinking  of  the  "  strange 
affectation  in  many  people  of  explaining  away  all  par- 
ticular affections,  and  representing  the  whole  of  life 
as  nothing  but  one  continual  exercise  of  self-love,"  by 
which  he  had  so  often  been  made  impatient.  One  of 
the  signal  merits  of  Mr.  Pattison's  admirable  sketch, 
in  Essays  and  Reviews,  of  the  course  of  religious  ideas 
in  England  from  the  Eevolution  to  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  is  that  it  so  clearly  marks  this 
correspondence,  at  the  time  when  Butler  wrote,  be- 
tween  what  English  society  argued  and  what  English 
theology  answered.  Society  was  full  of  discussions 
about  religion,  of  objections  to  eternal  punishment  as 
inconsistent  with  the  Divine  goodness,  and  to  a  system 
of  future  rewards  as  subversive  of  a  disinterested  love 
of  virtue : — 

"The  deistical  writers,"  says  Mr.  Pattison,  "formed  the 
atmosphere  which  educated  people  breathed.  The  objections 
the  Analogy  meets  are  not  new  and  unreasoned  objections,  but 
such  as  had  worn  well,  and  had  borne  the  rub  of  controversy, 
because  they  were  genuine.  It  was  in  society,  and  not  in  his 
study,  that  Butler  had  learned  the  weight  of  the  deistical 
arguments." 

And  in  a  further  sentence  Mr.  Pattison,  in   my 


252       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

opinion,  has  almost  certainly  put  his  finger  on  the 
very  determining  cause  of  the  Analogy's  existence  : — 

"At  the  Queen's  philosophical  parties,  where  these  topics 
(the  deistical  objections)  were  canvassed  with  earnestness  and 
freedom,  Butler  must  often  have  felt  the  impotence  of  reply 
in  detail,  and  seen,  as  he  says,  '  how  impossible  it  must  be,  in 
a  cursory  conversation,  to  unite  all  into  one  argument,  and 
represent  it  as  it  ought  to  be.'  " 

This  connecting  of  the  Analogy  with  the  Queen's 
philosophical  parties  seems  to  me  an  idea  inspired  by 
true  critical  genius.  The  parties  given  by  Queen 
Caroline, — a  clever  and  strong-minded  woman, — the 
recluse  and  grave  Butler  had,  as  her  Clerk  of  the 
Closet,  to  attend  regularly.  Discussion  was  free  at 
them,  and  there  Butler  no  doubt  heard  in  abundance 
the  talk  of  what  is  well  described  as  the  "  loose  kind  of 
deism  which  was  the  then  tone  of  fashionable  circles." 
The  Analogy,  with  its  peculiar  strain  and  temper,  is 
the  result.  "  Cavilling  and  objecting  upon  any  sub- 
ject is  much  easier  than  clearing  up  difficulties ;  and 
this  last  part  will  always  be  put  upon  the  defenders 
of  religion."  Surely  that  must  be  a  reminiscence  of 
the  "  loose  kind  of  deism  "  and  of  its  maintainers ! 
And  then  comes  the  very  sentence  which  Mr.  Pattison 
has  in  part  quoted,  and  which  is  worth  quoting 
entire  : — 

"Then,  again,  the  general  evidence  of  religion  is  complex 
and  various.  It  consists  of  a  long  series  of  things,  one  prepara- 
tory and  confirming  another,  from  the  very  beginning  of  the 
world  to  the  present  time.  And  'tis  easy  to  see  how  impossible 
it  must  be,  in  a  cursory  conversation,  to  unite  all  this  into  one 
argument  and  represent  it  as  it  ought ;  and,  could  it  be  done, 
how  utterly  indisposed  people  would  be  to  attend  to  it.     I  say 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  253 

in  a  cursory  conversation,  whereas  unconnected  objections  are 
thrown  out  in  a  few  words  and  are  easily  apprehended,  without 
more  attention  than  is  usual  in  common  talk.  So  that  notwith- 
standing we  have  the  best  cause  in  the  world,  and  though  a 
man  were  very  capable  of  defending  it,  yet  I  know  not  why  he 
should  be  forward  to  undertake  it  upon  so  great  a  disadvantage 
and  to  so  little  good  effect,  as  it  must  be  done  amidst  the 
gaiety  and  carelessness  of  common  conversation." 

In  those  remarks  to  the  Durham  clergy,  Butler,  I 

say  again,  was  surely  thinking  of   difficulties  with 

which  he   had   himself   wrestled,  and  of  which  the 

remembrance  made  the  strenuous  tone  of  his  Analogy, 

as  he  laboured  at  it,  yet  more  strenuous.     What  a 

sceva  indignatio  burns  in  the  following  passage  from 

the  conclusion  to  that  work  : — 

1 '  Let  us  suppose  that  the  evidence  of  religion  in  general, 
and  of  Christianity,  has  been  seriously  inquired  into  by  all 
reasonable  men  among  us.  Yet  we  find  many  professedly  to 
reject  both,  upon  speculative  principles  of  infidelity.  And  all 
of  them  do  not  content  themselves  with  a  bare  neglect  of  reli- 
gion, and  enjoying  their  imaginary  freedom  from  its  restraints. 
Some  go  much  beyond  this.  They  deride  God's  moral  govern- 
ment over  the  world.  They  renounce  his  protection  and  defy 
Ids  justice.  They  ridicule  and  vilify  Christianity,  and  blaspheme 
the  Author  of  it ;  and  take  all  occasions  to  manifest  a  scorn  and 
contempt  of  revelation.  This  amounts  to  an  active  setting 
themselves  against  religion,  to  what  may  be  considered  as  a 
positive  principle  of  irreligion,  which  they  cultivate  within 
themselves,  and  whether  they  intend  this  effect  or  not,  render 
habitual,  as  a  good  man  does  the  contrary  principle.  And 
others,  who  are  not  chargeable  with  all  this  profligateness,  yet 
are  in  avowed  opposition  to  religion,  as  if  discovered  to  be 
groundless." 

And  with  the  same  penetrating  tone  of  one  who 
has  seen  with  his  own  eyes  that  of  which  he  com- 
plains, has  heard  it  with  his  own  ears,  suffered  from  it 


254       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [it. 

in  his  own  person,  Butler,  in  1740,  talks  of  "the 
dark  prospects  before  us  from  that  profligateness  of 
manners  and  scorn  of  religion  which  so  generally 
abound  ; "  and,  in  1751,  speaking  in  the  last  year  but 
one  of  his  life,  he  thus  begins  his  charge  to  the  clergy 
of  Durham : — 

"  It  is  impossible  for  me,  my  brethren,  upon  our  first  meet- 
ing of  this  kind,  to  forbear  lamenting  with  you  the  general 
decay  of  religion  in  this  nation,  which  is  now  observed  by  every 
one,  and  has  been  for  some  time  the  complaint  of  all  serious 
persons.  The  influence  of  it  is  more  and  more  wearing  out  of 
the  minds  of  men,  even  of  those  who  do  not  pretend  to  enter 
into  speculations  upon  the  subject.  But  the  number  of  those 
who  do,  and  who  profess  themselves  unbelievers,  increases,  and 
with  their  numbers  their  zeal." 

One  cannot  but  ask  oneself,  when  one  considers 
the  steadiness  of  our  country  through  the  French 
Revolution,  when  one  considers  the  power  and  preva- 
lence of  religion,  even  after  every  deduction  has  been 
made  for  what  impairs  its  strength, — the  power  and 
prevalence,  I  say,  of  religion  in  our  country  at  this 
hour, — one  cannot  but  ask  oneself  whether  Butler 
was  not  over-desponding,  whether  he  saw  the  whole 
real  state  of  things,  whether  he  did  not  attach  over- 
importance  to  certain  workings  which  he  did  see. 
Granted  that  he  himself  did  something  to  cure  the 
evil  which  he  describes;  granted  that  others  did 
something.  Yet,  had  the  evil  existed  fully  as  he 
describes  it,  I  doubt  whether  he,  and  Wesley,  and 
all  the  other  physicians,  could  have  cured  it.  I  doubt, 
even,  whether  their  effort  would  itself  have  been  pos- 
sible.    Look  at  a  contemporary  of  Butler  in  France, 


ii.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  255 

— a  man  who,  more  than  any  one  else,  reminds  me  of 
Butler, — the  great  French  statesman,  the  greatest,  in 
my  opinion,  that  France  has  ever  had ;  look  at  Turgot. 
Turgot  was  like  Butler  in  his  mental  energy,  in  his 
deep  moral  and  intellectual  ardour,  his  strenuousness. 
"Every  science,  every  language,  every  literature, 
every  business,"  says  Michelet,  "interested  Turgot." 
But  that  in  which  Turgot  most  resembled  Butler  was 
what  Michelet  calls  his  fkociti, — what  I  should  rather 
call  his  sceva  indignatio.  Like  Butler,  Turgot  was 
filled  with  an  astonished,  awful,  oppressive  sense  of 
"  the  immoral  thoughtlessness  "  of  men ;  of  the  heed- 
less, hazardous  way  in  which  they  deal  with  things  of 
the  greatest  moment  to  them ;  of  the  immense,  incal- 
culable misery  which  is  due  to  this  cause.  "The 
greatest  evils  in  life,"  Turgot  held,  just  as  Butler  did, 
"  have  had  their  rise  from  somewhat  which  was 
thought  of  too  little  importance  to  be  attended  to." 
And  for  these  serious  natures  religion,  one  would 
think,  is  the  line  of  labour  which  would  naturally 
first  suggest  itself.  And  Turgot  was  destined  for  the 
Church ;  he  prepared  to  take  orders,  like  Butler.  But 
in  1752,  when  Butler  lay  dying  at  Bath,  Turgot, — 
the  true  spiritual  yoke-fellow  of  Butler,  with  Butler's 
sacred  horror  at  men's  frivolity,  with  Butler's  sacred 
ardour  for  rescuing  them  from  the  consequences  of  it, 
— Turgot,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  could  stand  reli- 
gion, as  in  France  religion  then  presented  itself  to 
him,  no  longer.  "Iljeta  ce  masque"  says  Michelet, 
adopting  an  expression  of  Turgot's  own;  "he  flung 
away  that  mask."      He  took  to   the  work  of   civil 


256       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

government;  in  what  spirit  we  many  of  us  know, 
and  whoever  of  us  does  not  know  should  make  it  his 
business  to  learn.  Nine  years  afterwards  began  his 
glorious  administration  as  Intendant  of  the  Limousin, 
in  which  for  thirteen  years  he  showed  what  manner 
of  spirit  he  was  of.  When,  in  1774,  he  became 
Minister  and  Controller-General,  he  showed  the  same 
thing  on  a  more  conspicuous  stage.  "Whatsoever 
things  are  true,  whatsoever  things  are  nobly  serious, 
whatsoever  things  are  just,  whatsoever  things  are 
pure,  whatsoever  things  are  of  good  report," — that 
is  the  history  of  Turgot's  administration  !  He  was  a 
Joseph  Butler  in  government.  True,  his  work,  though 
done  as  secular  administration,  has  in  fact  and  reality 
a  religious  character ;  all  work  like  his  has  a  religious 
character.  But  the  point  to  seize  is  here  :  that  in  our 
country,  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a 
man  like  Butler  is  still  possible  in  religion ;  in  France 
he  is  only  possible  in  civil  government.  And  that  is 
what  I  call  a  true  "  decay  of  religion,  the  influence  of 
it  more  and  more  wearing  out  of  the  minds  of  men." 
The  very  existence  and  work  of  Butler  proves,  in 
spite  of  his  own  desponding  words,  that  matters  had 
not  in  his  time  gone  so  far  as  this  in  England. 

But  indeed  Mr.  Pattison,  in  the  admirable  essay 
which  I  have  mentioned,  supplies  us  with  almost 
positive  evidence  that  it  had  not.  Amongst  a  number 
of  instructive  quotations  to  show  the  state  of  religion 
in  England  between  1700  and  1750,  Mr.  Pattison 
gives  an  extract  from  a  violent  newspaper,  The  Inde- 
pendent Whig,  which  had  been  attacking  the  clergy 


il]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  257 

for  their  many  and  great  offences,  and  counselling 

them  to  mend  their  ways.      And  then   the   article 

goes  on  : — 

"  The  High  Church  Popish  clergy  will  laugh  in  their  sleeves 
at  this  advice,  and  think  there  is  folly  enough  yet  left  among 
the  laity  to  support  their  authority  ;  and  will  hug  themselves, 
and  rejoice  over  the  ignorance  of  the  Universities,  the  stupidity 
of  the  drunken  squires,  the  panic  of  the  tender  sex,  and  the 
never -to-be-shaJccn  constancy  of  the  multitude." 

The  date  of  that  extract  is  1720.  The  language  is 
the  well-known  language  of  Liberal  friends  of  pro- 
gress, when  they  speak  of  persons  and  institutions 
which  are  inconvenient  to  them.  But  it  proves,  to 
my  mind, — and  there  is  plenty  of  other  evidence  to 
prove  the  same  thing, — it  proves  that  religion,  what- 
ever may  have  been  the  deficiencies  of  itself  and  of 
its  friends,  was  nevertheless,  in  1720,  still  a  very 
great  and  serious  power  in  this  country.  And  cer- 
tainly it  did  not  suddenly  cease  to  be  so  between 
1720  and  1750. 

No,  Butler's  mournful  language  has  in  it,  one  may 
be  almost  certain,  something  of  exaggeration.  To  a 
man  of  Butler's  seriousness  the  world  will  always 
afford  plenty  of  matter  for  apprehension  and  sorrow. 
And  to  add  to  this  were  certain  special  circumstances 
of  his  time,  peculiarly  trying  to  an  earnest  dealer, 
such  as  he  was,  with  great  thoughts  and  great 
interests.  There  was  his  bitter  personal  experience 
of  "  the  loose  kind  of  deism  which  was  the  tone  of 
fashionable  circles."  There  was  his  impatience, — half 
contemptuous,  half  indignant, — of  a  state  of  things 
where,  as  Mr.  Pattison  says,  "  the  religious  writer 

vol.  VII.  s 


258       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [n. 

had  now  to  appear  at  the  bar  of  criticism,"  but  of 
such  criticism  !  For,  "if  ever  there  was  a  time,"  says 
Mr.  Pattison,  again,  "when  abstract  speculation  was 
brought  down  from  inaccessible  heights  and  com- 
pelled to  be  intelligible,  it  was  the  period  from  the 
Eevolution  to  1750."  This  in  itself  was  all  very 
good,  and  Butler  would  have  been  the  last  man  to 
wish  it  otherwise.  But  to  whom  was  abstract  specu- 
lation required  thus  to  make  itself  intelligible  1  To 
the  "  fashionable  circles,"  to  the  whole  multitude  of 
loose  thinkers  and  loose  livers,  who  might  choose  to 
lend  half  an  ear  for  half  an  hour  to  the  great  argu- 
ment. "It  must  gain,"  we  are  told,  "the  wits  and 
the  town."     Hence  the  sceva  indignatio. 

And  therefore  Butler,  when  he  gets  into  the  pulpit, 
or  when  he  sits  down  at  his  writing-table,  will  have 
the  thing  out  with  his  adversaries.  He  will  "  unite 
it  all  into  one  argument  and  represent  it  as  it  ought," 
and  he  will  fairly  argue  his  objectors  down.  He  will 
place  himself  on  their  own  ground,  take  their  own 
admissions,  and  will  prove  to  them,  in  a  manner 
irresistible  to  any  fair  thinker,  that  they  are  wrong, 
and  that  they  are  bound  to  make  their  life  and  prac- 
tice, what  it  is  not,  religious. 

There  is  a  word  which  I  have  often  used,  and  with 
my  use  of  which  some  of  those  who  hear  me  may 
possibly  be  familiar :  the  Greek  word  epieikes  or 
epieikeia,  meaning  that  which  is  at  once  reasonable 
and  prepossessing,  or  "sweet  reasonableness."  The 
original  meaning  of  the  word  epieikes  is,  that  which 
has  an  air  of  consummate  truth  and  likelihood,  and 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  259 

which,  by  virtue  of  having  this  air,  is  prepossessing. 
And  ejrieikeia  is  well  rendered  by  "  sweet  reasonable- 
ness," because  that  which  above  all  things  has  an  air 
of  truth  and  likelihood,  that  which,  therefore,  above 
all  things,  is  prepossessing,  is  whatever  is  sweetly 
reasonable.  You  know  what  a  power  was  this  quality 
in  the  talkings  and  dealings  of  Jesus  Christ.  JEpieikeia 
is  the  very  word  to  characterise  true  Christianity. 
And  true  Christianity  wins,  not  by  an  argumentative 
victory,  not  by  going  through  a  long  debate  with  a 
person,  examining  the  arguments  for  his  case  from 
beginning  to  end,  and  making  him  confess  that, 
whether  he  feels  disposed  to  yield  or  no,  yet  in  fair 
logic  and  fair  reason  he  ought  to  yield.  No,  but  it 
puts  something  which  tends  to  transform  him  and  his 
practice,  it  puts  this  particular  thing  in  such  a  way 
before  a  man  that  he  feels  disposed  and  eager  to  lay 
hold  of  it.  And  he  does,  therefore,  lay  hold  of  it, 
though  without  at  all  perceiving,  very  often,  the 
whole  scheme  to  which  it  belongs ;  and  thus  his 
practice  gets  changed.  This,  I  think,  every  one  will 
admit  to  be  Christianity's  most  true  and  characteristic 
way  of  getting  people  to  embrace  religion.  Now,  it 
is  to  be  observed  how  totally  unlike  a  way  it  is  to 
Butler's,  although  Butler's  object  is  the  same  as 
Christianity's :  to  get  people  to  embrace  religion. 
And  the  object  being  the  same,  it  must  strike  every 
one  that  the  way  followed  by  Christianity  has  the 
advantage  of  a  far  greater  effectualness  than  Butler's 
way;  since  people  are  much  more  easily  attracted 
into  making  a  change  than  argued  into  it.     However, 


260       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [n. 

Butler  seems  to  think  that  enough  has  been  done  if 

it  has  been  proved  to  people,  in  such  a  way  as  to 

silence  their  arguments  on  the  other  side,  that  they 

ought  to  make  a  change.     For  he  says  expressly : — 

"  There  being,  as  I  have  shown,  such  evidence  for  religion  as 
is  sufficient  in  reason  to  influence  men  to  embrace  it,  to  object 
that  it  is  not  to  be  imagined  mankind  will  be  influenced  by  such 
evidence  is  nothing  to  the  purpose  of  the  foregoing  treatise  (his 
Analogy).  For  the  purpose  of  it  is  not  to  inquire  what  sort  of 
creatures  mankind  are,  but  what  the  light  and  knowledge  which 
is  afforded  them  requires  they  should  be  ;  to  show  how  in  reason 
they  ought  to  behave,  not  how  in  fact  they  will  behave.  This 
depends  upon  themselves  and  is  their  own  concern — the  personal 
concern  of  each  man  in  particular.  And  how  little  regard  the 
generality  have  to  it,  experience,  indeed,  does  too  fully  show. 
But  religion,  considered  as  a  probation,  has  had  its  end  upon 
all  persons  to  whom  it  has  been  proposed  with  evidence  suffi- 
cient in  reason  to  influence  their  practice  ;  for  by  this  means 
they  have  been  put  into  a  state  of  probation,  let  them  behave 
as  they  will  in  it. " 

So  that,  in  short,  Butler's  notion  of  converting  the 
loose  deists  of  fashionable  circles  comes  to  this :  by 
being  plied  with  evidence  sufficient  in  reason  to  influ- 
ence their  practice,  they  are  to  be  put  into  a  state  of 
probation ;  let  them  behave  as  they  will  in  it.  Prob- 
ably no  one  can  hear  such  language  without  a  secret 
dissatisfaction.  For,  after  all,  the  object  of  religion  is 
conversion,  and  to  change  people's  behaviour.  But 
where,  then,  is  the  use  of  saying  that  you  will  inquire 
not  what  people  are,  but  how  in  reason  they  ought  to 
behave  ?  Why,  it  is  what  they  are  which  determines 
their  sense  of  how  they  ought  to  behave.  Make 
them,  therefore,  so  to  feel  what  they  are,  as  to  get  a 
fruitful  sense  of  how  they  ought  to  behave.     The 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  261 

Founder  of  Christianity  did  so ;  and  whatever  success 
Christianity  has  had,  has  been  gained  by  this  method. 
However,  Butler's  line  is  what  it  is.  We  are  con- 
cerned with  what  we  can  use  of  it.  With  his  argu- 
mentative triumphs  over  the  loose  thinkers  and  talkers 
of  his  day,  so  far  as  it  is  a  triumph  won  by  taking  their 
own  data  and  using  their  own  admissions,  we  are  not 
concerned  unless  their  admissions  and  their  data  are 
ours  too.  And  they  are  not.  But  it  is  affirmed,  not  (JU* 
only  that  the  loose  deists  of  fashionable  circles  could 
not  answer  the  Analogy;  it  is  affirmed,  farther, 
that  the  Analogy  is  unanswerable.  It  is  asserted, 
not  only  that  Hobbes  or  Shaftesbury  delivered  an 
unsatisfactory  theory  of  morals,  and  that  Butler  in 
his  Sermons  disputed  their  reasonings  with  success ; 
but  it  is  asserted,  farther,  that  Butler,  on  his  side, 
"  pursued  precisely  the  same  mode  of  reasoning  in  the 
science  of  morals  as  his  great  predecessor,  Newton, 
had  done  in  the  system  of  nature,"  and  that  by  so 
doing  Butler  has  "formed  and  concluded  a  happy 
alliance  between  faith  and  philosophy."  Achieve- 
ment of  this  kind  is  what  the  "  Time-Spirit,"  or  Zeit- 
Geist,  which  sweeps  away  so  much  that  is  local  and 
personal,  will  certainly  respect.  Achievement  of  this 
sort  deeply  concerns  us.  An  unanswerable  work  on 
the  evidence  of  religion,  a  science  of  human  nature 
and  of  morals  reached  by  a  method  as  sure  as  New- 
ton's, a  happy  alliance  between  faith  and  philosophy, 
—  what  can  concern  us  more  deeply?  If  Butler 
accomplished  all  this,  he  does  indeed  give  us  what  we 
can   use  ;  he   is   indeed   great.      But   supposing   ho 


262       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUKCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

should  turn  out  not  to  have  accomplished  all  this, 
what  then?  Does  he  vanish  away1?  Does  he  give 
us  nothing  which  we  can  use  1  And  if  he  does  give 
us  something  which  we  can  use,  what  is  it  1  and  if  he 
remains  a  great  man  to  us  still,  why  does  he  1 


3. 

Let  us  begin  with  the  Sermons  at  the  Rolls,  Butler's 
first  publication.  You  have  heard,  for  I  have  quoted 
it,  the  unbounded  praise  which  has  been  given  to  the 
three  sermons  On  Human  Nature.  And  they  do  in- 
deed lay  the  foundation  for  the  whole  doctrine  of  the 
Sermons  at  the  Rolls,  of  the  body  of  sermons  wherein 
is  given  Butler's  system  of  moral  philosophy.  Their 
argument  is  familiar,  probably,  to  many  of  us.  Let 
me  recite  it  briefly  by  abridging  the  best  of  all  possible 
accounts  of  it, — Butler's  own  account  in  his  preface : — 

"  Mankind  has  various  instincts  and  principles  of  action.  The 
generality  of  mankind  obey  their  instincts  and  principles,  all  of 
them,  those  propensions  we  call  good  as  well  as  the  bad,  accord- 
ing to  the  constitution  of  their  body  and  the  external  circum- 
stances which  they  are  in.  They  are  not  wholly  governed  by 
self-love,  the  love  of  power,  and  sensual  appetites ;  they  are 
frequently  influenced  by  friendship,  compassion,  gratitude ;  and 
even  a  general  abhorrence  of  what  is  base,  and  liking  of  what 
is  fair  and  just,  take  their  turn  amongst  the  other  motives  of 
action.  This  is  the  partial  inadequate  notion  of  human  nature 
treated  of  in  the  first  discourse,  and  it  is  by  this  nature,  if  one 
may  speak  so,  that  the  world  is  in  fact  influenced  and  kept  in 
that  tolerable  order  in  which  it  is. 

"  Mankind  in  thus  acting  would  act  suitably  to  their  whole 
nature,  if  no  more  were  to  be  said  of  man's  nature  than  what  has 
been  now  said.     But  that  is  not  a  complete  account  of  man's 


ii.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  263 

nature.  Somewhat  further  must  be  brought  in  to  give  us  an 
adequate  notion  of  it — namely,  that  one  of  those  principles  of 
action — conscience  or  reflection — compared  with  the  rest  as  they 
all  stand  together  in  the  nature  of  man,  plainly  bears  upon  it 
marks  of  authority  over  all  the  rest,  and  claims  the  absolute 
direction  of  them  all,  to  allow  or  forbid  their  gratification ;  a 
disapprobation  of  reflection  being  in  itself  a  principle  manifestly 
superior  to  a  mere  propension.  And  the  conclusion  is,  that  to 
allow  no  more  to  this  superior  principle  or  part  of  our  nature 
than  to  other  parts,  to  let  it  govern  and  guide  only  occasionally 
in  common  with  the  rest,  as  its  turn  happens  to  come,  from  the 
temper  and  circumstances  one  happens  to  be  in — this  is  not  to 
act  conformably  to  the  constitution  of  man,  neither  can  any 
human  creature  be  said  to  act  conformably  to  his  constitution 
and  nature,  unless  he  allows  to  that  superior  principle  the  abso- 
lute authority  which  is  due  to  it.  And  this  conclusion  is  abun- 
dantly confirmed  from  hence — that  one  may  determine  what 
course  of  action  the  economy  of  man's  nature  requires,  without 
so  much  as  learning  in  what  degrees  of  strength  the  several  prin- 
ciples prevail,  or  which  of  them  have  actually  the  greatest  in- 
fluence." 

And  the  whole  scope  and  object  of  the  three  sermons 

On  Human  Nature,  Butler  describes  thus  : — 

' '  They  were  intended  to  explain  what  is  meant  by  the  nature 
of  man,  when  it  is  said  that  virtue  consists  in  following,  and 
vice  in  deviating  from  it ;  and  by  explaining  to  show  that  the 
assertion  is  true." 

Now,  it  may  be  at  once  allowed  that  Butler's 
notion  of  human  nature  as  consisting  of  a  number  of 
instincts  and  principles  of  action,  with  conscience  as 
a  superior  principle  presiding  over  them,  corresponds 
in  a  general  way  with  facts  of  which  we  are  all  con- 
scious, and  if  practically  acted  upon  would  be  found 
to  work  satisfactorily.  When  Butler  says  :  "  Let  any 
plain  honest  man  before  he  engages  in  any  course  of 
action,  ask  himself,  '  Is  this  I  am  going  about  right, 


264       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [n. 

or  is  it  wrong  ?  Is  it  good  or  is  it  evil  1 '  and  I  do 
not  in  the  least  doubt  but  that  this  question  would 
be  answered  agreeably  to  truth  and  virtue  by  almost 
any  fair  man  in  almost  any  circumstance;" — when 
Butler  says  this,  he  is  on  solid  ground,  and  his  whole 
scheme  has  its  rise,  indeed,  in  the  sense  that  this 
ground  is  solid.  When  he  calls  our  nature  "  the  voice 
of  God  within  us ; "  or  when  he  suggests  that  there 
may  be  "  distinct  from  the  reflection  of  reason,  a 
mutual  sympathy  between  each  particular  of  the  species, 
a  fellow-feeling  common  to  mankind;"  or  when  he 
finely  says  of  conscience,  "  Had  it  strength  as  it  has 
right,  had  it  power  as  it  has  manifest  authority,  it 
would  absolutely  govern  the  world ; " — in  all  this, 
Butler  is  in  contact  with  the  most  precious  truth  and 
reality,  and  so  far  as  this  truth  and  reality  inform  the 
scheme  which  he  has  drawn  out  for  human  nature,  his 
scheme  has  life  in  it. 

Equally  may  it  be  allowed,  that  the  errors,  which 
his  scheme  is  designed  to  correct,  are  errors  indeed. 
If  the  Epicureans,  or  Hobbes,  or  any  one  else,  "  ex- 
plain the  desire  of  praise  and  of  being  beloved,  as  no 
other  than  desire  of  safety ;  regard  to  our  country, 
even  in  the  most  virtuous  character,  as  nothing  but 
regard  to  ourselves ;  curiosity  as  proceeding  from 
interest  or  pride ;  as  if  there  were  no  such  passions 
in  mankind  as  desire  of  esteem,  or  of  being  beloved, 
or  of  knowledge;" — if  these  delineators  of  human 
nature  represent  it  thus,  they  represent  it  fantastic- 
ally. If  Shaftesbury,  laying  it  clown  that  virtue  is 
the  happiness  of  man,  and  encountered  by  the  objec- 


ii.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  265 

tion  that  one  may  be  not  convinced  of  this  happy 
tendency  of  virtue  or  may  be  of  a  contrary  opinion, 
meets  the  objection  by  determining  that  the  case  is 
without  remedy,  then  this  noble  moralist  moralises 
ill.  If  Butler  found  some  persons  (probably  the  loose 
deists  of  fashionable  circles)  "  who,  upon  principle, 
set  up  for  suppressing  the  affection  of  compassion  as 
a  weakness,  so  that  there  is  I  know  not  what  of  fashion 
on  this  side,  and  by  some  means  or  other  the  whole 
world,  almost,  is  run  into  the  extremes  of  insensibility 
towards  the  distresses  of  their  fellow-creatures;" — if 
this  was  so,  then  the  fashionable  theory  of  human 
nature  was  vicious  and  false,  and  Butler,  in  seeking 
to  substitute  a  better  for  it,  was  quite  right. 

But  Butler  himself  brings  in  somebody  as  asking  : 
"Allowing  that  mankind  hath  the  rule  of  right  within 
itself,  what  obligations  are  we  under  to  attend  to  and 
follow  it1?"  And  he  answers  this  question  quite 
fairly:  "Your  obligation  to  obey  this  law,  is  its  being 
the  law  of  your  nature."  But  let  us  vary  the  ques- 
tion a  little,  and  let  us  ask  Butler :  "  Suppose  your 
scheme  of  human  nature  to  correspond  in  a  general 
way,  but  no  more,  with  facts  of  which  we  are  con- 
scious, and  to  promise  to  work  practically  well  enough, 
what  obligations  are  we  under  to  attend  to  and  follow 
it  ? "  Butler  cannot  now  answer  us  :  "  Your  obliga- 
tion to  obey  this  law,  is  its  being  the  law  of  your 
nature."  For  this  is  just  what  is  not  yet  made  out. 
All  that  we  suppose  to  be  yet  made  out  about  Butler's 
scheme  of  human  nature, — its  array  of  instincts  and 
principles  with  the  superior  principle  of  conscience 


266       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

presiding, — is,  that  the  scheme  has  a  general  corre- 
spondence with  facts  of  human  nature  whereof  we  are 
conscious.  But  the  time  comes, — sooner  or  later  the 
time  comes, — to  individuals  and  even  to  societies, 
when  the  foundations  of  the  great  deep  are  broken 
up,  and  everything  is  in  question,  and  people  want 
surer  holding-ground  than  a  sense  of  general  corre- 
spondence, in  any  scheme  and  rule  of  human  nature 
proposed  to  them,  with  facts  whereof  they  are  con- 
scious. They  ask  themselves  what  this  sense  of 
general  correspondence  is  really  worth.  They  sift 
the  facts  of  which  they  are  conscious,  and  their  con- 
sciousness of  which  seemed  to  lend  a  credibility  to  the 
scheme  proposed.  They  insist  on  strict  verification 
of  whatever  is  to  be  admitted ;  and  the  authority  of 
the  scheme  with  them  stands  or  falls  according  as  it 
does  or  does  not  come  out  undamaged,  after  all  this 
process  has  been  gone  through.  If  Butler's  scheme 
of  human  nature  comes  out  undamaged  after  being 
submitted  to  a  process  of  this  kind,  then  it  is  indeed, 
as  its  admirers  call  it,  a  Newtonian  work.  It  is  a 
work  "  placed  on  the  firm  basis  of  observation  and 
experiment ;"  it  is  a  true  work  of  discovery.  His 
doctrine  may,  with  justice,  be  then  called  "an  irre- 
sistible doctrine  made  out  according  to  the  strict  truth 
of  our  mental  constitution." 

Let  us  take  Butler's  natural  history  of  what  he 
calls  "  our  instincts  and  principles  of  action."  It  is 
this : — They  have  been  implanted  in  us ;  put  into 
us  ready-made,  to  serve  certain  ends  intended  by  the 
Author  of  our  nature.     When  we  see  what  each  of 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  267 

them  "is  in  itself,  as  placed  in  our  nature  by  its 
Author,  it  will  plainly  appear  for  what  ends  it  was 
placed  there."  "Perfect  goodness  in  the  Deity," 
says  Butler,  "is  the  principle  from  whence  the  uni- 
verse was  brought  into  being,  and  by  which  it  is 
preserved ;  and  general  benevolence  is  the  great  law 
of  the  moral  creation."  But  some  of  our  passions 
and  propensions  seem  to  go  against  goodness  and 
benevolence.  However,  we  could  not  do  without 
our  stock  of  passions  and  propensions  of  all  sorts, 
because  "that  would  leave  us  without  a  sufficient 
principle  of  action."  "Eeason  alone,"  argues 
Butler — 

"Reason  alone,  whatever  any  one  may  wish,  is  not  in 
reality  a  sufficient  motive  of  virtue  in  such  a  creature  as  man  ; 
but  this  reason,  joined  with  those  affections  which  God  has 
impressed  upon  his  heart ;  and  when  these  are  allowed  scope 
to  exercise  themselves,  but  under  strict  government  and  direc- 
tion of  reason,  then  it  is  we  act  suitably  to  our  nature,  and  to 
the  circumstances  God  has  placed  us  in." 

And  even  those  affections,  which  seem  to  create 
difficulties  for  us,  are  purposely  given,  Butler  says — 

' '  Some  of  them  as  a  guard  against  the  violent  assaults  of 
others,  and  in  our  own  defence  ;  some  in  behalf  of  others  ;  and 
all  of  them  to  put  us  upon,  and  help  to  carry  us  through,  a 
course  of  behaviour  suitable  to  our  condition." 

For 

"As  God  Almighty  foresaw  the  irregularities  and  disorders, 
both  natural  and  moral,  which  would  happen  in  this  state  of 
things,  he  hath  graciously  made  some  provision  against  them, 
by  giving  us  several  passions  and  affections,  which  arise  from, 
or  whose  objects  are,  those  disorders.  Of  this  sort  are  fear, 
resentment,  compassion,  and  others,  of  which  there  could  be 


268       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [n. 

no  occasion  or  use  in  a  perfect  state,  but  in  the  present  we 
should  be  exposed  to  greater  inconveniences  without  them, 
though  there  are  very  considerable  ones  which  they  them- 
selves are  the  occasion  of. " 

This  is  Butler's  natural  history  of  the  origin  of 
our  principles  of  action.  I  take  leave  to  say  that 
it  is  not  based  on  observation  and  experiment.  It 
is  not  physiology,  but  fanciful  hypothesis.  There- 
fore it  is  not  Newtonian,  for  Newton  said  :  Hypotheses 
non  jingo.  And  suppose  a  man,  in  a  time  of  great 
doubt  and  unsettlement,  finding  many  things  fail 
him  which  have  been  confidently  pressed  on  his 
acceptance,  and  looking  earnestly  for  something 
which  he  feels  he  can  really  go  upon  and  which 
will  prove  to  him  a  sure  stay; — suppose  such  a 
man  coming  to  Butler,  because  he  hears  that  in 
the  ethical  discussions  of  his  sermons  Butler  sup- 
plies, as  Mackintosh  says,  "truths  more  satisfac- 
torily established  by  him,  and  more  worthy  of  the 
name  of  discovery,  than  perhaps  any  with  which  we 
are  acquainted."  Well,  such  a  man,  I  think,  when 
he  finds  that  Butler's  ethics  involve  an  immense 
hypothesis  to  start  with,  as  to  the  origin  and  final 
causes  of  all  our  passions  and  affections,  cannot  but 
feel  disconcerted  and  impatient. 

And  disconcerted  and  impatient,  I  am  afraid,  we 
must  for  the  present  leave  him. 


BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZETT-GEIST. 

II 

Butler  designs  to  found  a  sure  system  of  morals, 
and,  in  order  to  found  it,  he,  as  we  have  seen,  tells 
us  how  we  originally  came  by  our  instincts  and 
affections.  They  were,  he  tells  us,  "placed  in  us 
by  God,  to  put  us  upon  and  help  to  carry  us  through 
a  course  of  behaviour  suitable  to  our  condition." 
Here,  as  every  one  will  admit,  we  cannot  directly 
verify  the  truth  of  what  our  author  says.  But  he 
also  examines  such  and  such  of  our  affections  in 
themselves,  to  make  good  his  theory  of  their  origin 
and  final  causes.  And  here  we  can  verify  the  degree 
in  which  his  report  of  facts,  and  the  construction  he 
puts  upon  them,  carries  us  along  with  it,  inspires  us 
with  confidence  in  his  scheme  of  human  nature. 

Butler  notices,  that  compassion  for  the  distresses 
of  others  is  felt  much  more  generally  than  delight 
in  their  prosperity.     And  he  says  :— 

"The  reason  and  account  of  which  matter  is  this  :  when  a 
man  has  obtained  any  particular  advantage  or  felicity,  his  end 
is  gained,  and  he  does  not,  in  that  particular,  want  the  assist- 
ance of  another  ;  there  was  therefore  no  need  of  a  distinct  affec- 
tion towards  that  felicity  of  another  already  obtained,  neither 
would  such  affection  directly  carry  him  on  to  do  good  to  that 
person  ;  whereas  men  in  distress  want  assistance,  and  com- 
passion leads  us  directly  to  assist  them.  The  object  of  the 
former  is  the  present  felicity  of  another ;  the  object  of  the 


270       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [n. 

latter  is  the  present  misery  of  another.  It  is  easy  to  see  that 
the  latter  ivants  a  particular  affection  for  its  relief,  and  that 
the  former  does  not  want  one,  because  it  does  not  want 
assistance. " 

Such  an  explanation,  why  compassion  at  another's 
distress  is  stronger  than  satisfaction  at  another's  pros- 
perity, was  well  suited,  no  doubt,  to  Butler's  theory 
of  the  origin  and  final  causes  of  all  our  affections. 
But  will  any  one  say  that  it  carries  a  real  student 
of  nature  along  with  it  and  inspires  him  with  con- 
fidence, any  more  than  Hobbes's  resolution  of  all 
benevolence  into  a  mere  love  of  power  1 — that  it  is 
not  just  as  fantastic  ? 

Again,  take  Butler's  account   of   the  passion  of 

anger  and  resentment.     There  is  sudden  anger,  he 

says,  and  there  is  deliberate  anger  : — 

"The  reason  and  the  end  for  which  man  was  made  liable 
to  the  passion  of  sudden  anger  is,  that  he  might  be  better 
qualified  to  prevent,  and  likewise  (or  perhaps  chiefly)  to  resist 
and  defeat,  sudden  force,  violence,  and  opposition,  considered 
merely  as  such.  It  stands  in  our  nature  for  self-defence,  and 
not  for  the  administration  of  justice.  Deliberate  anger,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  given  us  to  farther  the  ends  of  justice  ;  not 
natural  but  moral  evil,  not  suffering  but  injury,  raises  that 
anger  ;  it  is  resentment  against  vice  and  wickedness. " 

And — 

"The  natural  object  of  settled  resentment,  then,  being  injury, 
as  distinct  from  pain  or  loss,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  to  prevent 
and  to  remedy  such  injury,  and  the  miseries  arising  from  it, 
is  the  end  for  which  this  passion  was  implanted  in  man. " 

But  anger  has  evident  dangers  and  abuses.  True. 
But— 

"  Since  it  is  necessary,  for  the  very  subsistence  of  the  world, 
that  injury,   injustice,  and  cruelty  should  be  punished ;  and 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  271 

since  compassion,  which  is  so  natural  to  mankind,  would 
render  that  execution  of  justice  exceedingly  difficult  and 
uneasy,  indignation  against  vice  and  wickedness  is  a  balance 
to  that  weakness  of  pity,  and  also  to  anything  else  which 
would  prevent  the  necessary  methods  of  severity. " 

And  it  is  the  business  of  the  faculty  of  conscience,  or 
reflection,  to  tell  us  how  anger  may  be  innocently 
and  rightly  employed,  so  as  to  serve  the  end  for 
which  God  placed  it  in  our  nature. 

In  times  when  everything  is  conventional,  when 
no  one  looks  very  closely  into  himself  or  into  what  is 
told  him  about  his  moral  nature,  this  sort  of  natural 
history  may,  perhaps,  look  likely  enough,  and  may 
even  pass  for  Newtonian.  But  let  a  time  come  when, 
as  I  say,  the  foundations  of  the  great  deep  are  broken 
up,  when  a  man  searches  with  passionate  earnestness 
for  something  certain,  and  can  and  will  henceforth 
build  upon  facts  only ;  then  the  arbitrary  assertions 
of  such  a  psychology  as  this  of  Butler's  will  be  felt  to 
be  perfectly  fantastic  and  unavailing. 

And  even  when  the  arbitrary  and  fantastic  char- 
acter of  his  psychology  is  not  so  apparent,  Butler  will 
be  felt  constantly  to  puzzle  and  perplex,  rather  than 
to  satisfy  us.  He  will  be  felt  not  to  carry  us  along 
with  him,  not  to  be  convincing.  He  has  his  theory 
that  our  appetites  and  affections  are  all  placed  in  our 
nature  by  God,  that  they  are  all  equally  natural,  that 
they  all  have  a  useful  end  to  serve  and  have  respect 
to  that  end  solely  ;  that  the  principle  of  conscience  is 
implanted  in  us  for  the  sake  of  arbitrating  between 
them,  of  assigning  to  certain  among  them  a  natural 


272       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUECH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

superiority,  of  using  each  in  its  right  measure  and  of 
guiding  it  to  its  right  end ;  and  that  the  degree  of 
strength,  in  which  any  one  of  our  affections  exists, 
affords  no  reason  at  all  for  following  it.  And  Butler's 
theory  requires,  moreover,  that  self-love  shall  be  but 
one  out  of  our  many  affections,  that  it  shall  have  a 
strictly  defined  end  of  its  own,  and  be  as  distinct 
from  those  affections  which  seem  most  akin  to  it,  and 
which  are  therefore  often  confounded  with  it,  as  it  is 
from  those, — such  as  benevolence,  we  will  say, — which 
nobody  is  tempted  to  confound  with  it.  Such  is 
Butler's  theory,  and  such  are  its  requirements.  And 
with  this  theory,  we  find  him  declaring  that  compas- 
sion is  a  primitive  affection  implanted  in  us  from  the 
first  by  the  Author  of  Nature  to  lead  us  to  public 
spirit,  just  as  hunger  was  implanted  in  us  from  the 
first  to  lead  us  to  our  own  personal  good,  and  from 
the  same  cause  :  namely,  that  reason  and  cool  self- 
love  would  not  by  themselves  have  been  sufficient  to 
lead  us  to  the  end  in  view,  without  the  appetite  and 
the  affection. 

"  The  private  interest  of  the  individual  would  not  be  suffi- 
ciently provided  for  by  reasonable  and  cool  self-love  alone  ; 
therefore  the  appetites  and  passions  are  placed  within  as  a  guard 
and  further  security,  without  which  it  would  not  be  taken  due 
care  of.  It  is  manifest,  our  life  would  be  neglected  were  it  not 
for  the  calls  of  hunger  and  thirst  and  weariness,  notwithstand- 
ing that  without  them  reason  would  assure  us,  that  the  recruits 
of  food  and  sleep  are  the  necessary  means  of  our  preservation. 
It  is  therefore  absurd  to  imagine  that,  without  affection  (the 
affection  of  compassion),  the  same  reason  alone  would  be  more 
effectual  to  engage  us  to  perform  the  duties  we  owe  to  our 
fellow-creatures. " 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  273 

The  argument  may  be  ingenious,  but  can  any- 
thing be  more  unsatisfactory  1  And  is  it  not,  to 
use  Butler's  words,  "  absurd  to  imagine "  that  in 
this  manner,  and  by  this  parallel  plan,  and  thus  to 
supplement  one  another,  hunger  and  reasonable  self- 
love,  compassion  and  "  a  settled  reasonable  principle 
of  benevolence  to  mankind,"  did  really  have  their 
rise  in  us  1 

Presently  we  find  Butler  marvelling  that  persons 
of  superior  capacity  should  dispute  the  obligation  of 
compassion  and  public  spirit,  and  asking  if  it  could 
ever  occur  to  a  man  of  plain  understanding  to  think 
"  that  there  was  absolutely  no  such  thing  in  man- 
kind as  affection  to  the  good  of  others, — suppose  of 
parents  to  their  children."  As  if  the  affection  of 
parents  to>their  children  was  an  affection  to  the  good 
of  others  of  just  the  same  natural  history  as  public 
spirit ! — as  if  the  two  were  alike  in  their  primariness, 
alike  in  their  date  of  obligation,  alike  in  their  kind  of 
evidence  !  One  is  an  affection  of  rudimentary  human 
nature,  the  other  is  a  slow  conquest  from  rudimentary 
human  nature.     And  once  more  :— 

"To  endeavour  to  get  rid  of  the  sorrow  of  compassion,  by 
turning  from  the  wretched,  is  as  unnatural,"  says  Butler,  "as 
to  endeavour  to  get  rid  of  the  pain  of  hunger,  by  keeping  from 
the  sight  of  food. " 

Now,  we  are  to  consider  this  as  a  practical  argument 
by  which  to  bring  a  man,  all  unsettled  about  the  rule 
of  his  conduct,  to  cultivate  in  himself  compassion. 
Surely  such  an  argument  would  astonish  rather  than 
convince  him  !  He  would  say  :  "  Can  it  be  so,  since 
VOL.  VII.  T 


274       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

we  see  that  men  continually  do  the  one,  never  the 
other  ? "     But  Butler  insists,  and  says  : — 

' '  That  we  can  do  one  with  greater  success  than  we  can  the 
other,  is  no  proof  that  one  is  less  a  violation  of  nature  than  the 
other.  Compassion  is  a  call,  a  demand  of  nature,  to  relieve  the 
unhappy,  as  hunger  is  a  natural  call  for  food." 

Surely,  nature,  natural,  must  be  used  here  in  a  some- 
what artificial  manner,  in  order  to  get  this  argument 
out  of  them  !  Yet  Butler  professes  to  stick  to  plain 
facts,  not  to  sophisticate,  not  to  refine. 

"Let  me  take  notice,"  he  says,  "of  the  danger  of  going 
beside  or  beyond  the  plain,  obvious,  first  appearances  of  things, 
upon  the  subject  of  morals  and  religion." 

But  is  it  in  accordance  with  the  plain,  obvious,  first 
appearances  of  things,  to  pronounce  compassion  to 
be  a  call,  a  demand  of  nature  to  relieve  the  unhappy, 
precisely  in  the  same  manner  as  hunger  is  a  natural 
call  for  food ;  and  to  say  that  to  neglect  one  call  is 
just  as  much  a  violation  of  nature  as  the  other  1 
Surely  Butler  could  not  talk  in  this  way,  unless  he 
had  first  laid  it  down  that  all  our  affections  are  in 
themselves  equally  natural,  and  that  no  degree  of 
greater  strength  and  frequency  can  make  one  affec- 
tion more  natural  than  the  other.  They  are  all, 
according  to  him,  voices  of  God.  But  the  principle 
of  reflection  or  conscience, — a  higher  voice  of  God, — 
decides  how  and  when  each  is  to  be  followed.  And 
when  Butler  has  laid  this  down,  he  has  no  difficult}^ 
in  affirming  that  it  is  as  unnatural  not  to  relieve  the 
distressed  as  not  to  eat  when  one  is  hungry.  Only 
one  feels,  not  convinced  and  satisfied,  but  in  doubt 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  275 

whether  he  ought  to  have  laid  it  down,  when  one  sees 
that  it  conducts  him  to  such  an  affirmation. 

Yet  once  more.  The  affection  of  compassion 
not  only  proves  that  it  is  as  unnatural  to  turn  away 
from  distress  as  to  turn  from  food  when  one  is 
hungry.  It  proves,  also,  that  this  world  was  in- 
tended neither  to  be  a  mere  scene  of  unhappiness  and 
sorrow,  nor  to  be  a  state  of  any  great  satisfaction  or 
high  enjoyment.  And  it  suggests  the  following 
lesson  for  us  : — 

"  There  being  that  distinct  affection  implanted  in  the  nature 
of  man  tending  to  lessen  the  miseries  of  life,  that  provision 
made  for  abating  its  sorrows  more  than  for  increasing  its  posi- 
tive happiness,  this  may  suggest  to  us  what  should  be  out- 
general aim  respecting  ourselves  in  our  passage  through  this 
world,  namely,  to  endeavour  chiefly  to  escape  misery,  keep  free 
from  uneasiness,  pain,  and  sorrow,  or  to  get  relief  and  mitiga- 
tion of  them  ;  to  propose  to  ourselves  peace  and  tranquillity  of 
mind  rather  than  pursue  after  high  enjoyments." 

And  Butler  goes  on  to  enumerate  several  so-called 
high  enjoyments,  such  as  "to  make  pleasure  and  mirth 
and  jollity  our  business,  to  be  constantly  hurrying 
about  after  some  gay  amusement,  some  new  gratifica- 
tion of  sense  or  appetite."  And  he  points  out,  what 
no  wise  man  will  dispute,  that  these  do  not  confer 
happiness,  and  that  we  do  wrong  to  make  them  our 
end  in  life.  No  doubt ;  yet  meanwhile,  in  his  main 
assertion  that  man's  proper  aim  is  escape  from  misery 
rather  than  positive  happiness,  Butler  goes  clean 
counter  to  the  most  intimate,  the  most  sure,  the 
most  irresistible  instinct  of  human  nature.  As  a 
little  known  but  profound  French  moralist,  Senan- 


276       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  EELIGION.         [n. 

cour,  has  said  admirably :  "  The  aim  for  man  is  to 
augment  the  feeling  of  joy,  to  make  our  expansive 
energy  bear  fruit,  and  to  combat,  in  all  thinking 
beings,  the  principle  of  degradation  and  misery." 
But  Butler  goes  counter,  also,  to  the  clear  voice  of 
our  religion.  "  Eejoice  and  give  thanks  !  "  exhorts 
the  Old  Testament;  "Rejoice  evermore!"  exhorts 
the  New.  This,  and  not  mere  escape  from  misery, 
getting  freedom  from  uneasiness,  pain,  and  sorrow,  or 
getting  mitigation  of  them,  is  what  (to  turn  Butler's 
words  against  himself)  "  the  consideration  of  nature 
marks  out  as  the  course  we  should  follow  and  the 
end  we  should  aim  at."  And  a  scheme  of  human 
nature,  meant  to  serve  as  a  rule  for  human  conduct, 
cannot,  however  ingenious,  be  said  to  explain  things 
irresistibly  according  to  the  strict  truth  of  our  mental 
constitution,  when  we  find  it  strongly  at  variance  with 
the  facts  of  that  constitution  on  a  point  of  capital 
inrportance. 

Even  at  past  fifty  years  of  age  I  approach  the  sub- 
ject, so  terrible  to  undergraduates,  of  Butler's  account 
of  self-love,  with  a  shiver  of  uneasiness.  Yet  I  will 
point  out  how  Butler's  own  arbitrary  definition  of 
self-love,  a  definition  which  the  cast  of  his  scheme  of 
human  nature  renders  necessary,  creates  the  diffi- 
culties of  his  assiduous,  laboured,  and  unsatisfying 
attempt  to  reconcile  self-love  with  benevolence.  He 
describes  self-love,  occasionally,  as  "a  general  desire 
of  our  own  happiness."  And  he  knew  well  enough, 
that  the  pursuit  of  our  own  interest  and  happiness, 
rightly  understood,  and  the  obedience  to  God's  com- 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  277 

mands,  "must  be  in  every  case  one  and  the  same 
thing."  Nevertheless,  Butler's  constant  notion  of  the 
pursuit  of  our  interest  is,  that  it  is  the  pursuit  of  our 
temporal  good,  as  he  calls  it ;  the  cool  consideration 
of  our  own  temporal  advantage.  And  he  expressly 
defines  his  self-love,  which  he  names  "  a  private  con- 
tracted affection,"  as  "  a  regard  to  our  private  good, 
our  private  interest."  Private  interest  is  the  favourite 
expression:  "a  cool  pursuit  of  our  private  interest." 
Now  to  say,  that  there  is  no  opposition  between  a 
general  desire  for  our  own  happiness,  and  a  love  of 
our  neighbour,  has  nothing  puzzling  in  it.  But  to 
define  self-love  as  a  private  contracted  affection,  con- 
sisting in  a  cool  deliberate  pursuit  of  our  private 
interest,  and  then  to  say,  as  Butler  does,  that  from 
self-love,  thus  denned,  love  of  our  neighbour  is  no 
more  distant  than  hatred  of  our  neighbour,  is  to 
sophisticate  things.  Butler  may  make  it  out  by 
stipulating  that  self-love  shall  merely  mean  pursuing 
our  private  interest,  and  not  pursuing  it  in  any  par- 
ticular manner,  just  as  he  makes  out  that  not  to 
relieve  the  distressed  is  as  unnatural  to  a  man  as  not 
to  eat  when  he  is  hungry,  by  stipulating  that  all  our 
affections  shall  be  considered  equally  natural.  But 
he  does  not  convince  a  serious  student  by  these 
refinements,  does  not  carry  such  a  student  with  him, 
does  not  help  such  a  student,  therefore,  a  step  nearer 
towards  practice.  And  a  moralist's  business  is  to 
help  towards  practice. 

The    truth   is,    all   this   elaborate   psychology  of 
Butler's,  which    satisfies  us   so   little, — so  little,  to 


278       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

use  Coleridge's  excellent  expression,  finds  us, —  is 
unsatisfying  because  of  its  radical  defectiveness  as 
natural  history.  What  he  calls  our  instincts  and 
principles  of  action,  which  are  in  truth  the  most 
obscure,  changing,  interdependent  of  phenomena, 
Butler  takes  as  if  they  were  things  as  separate,  fixed, 
and  palpable  as  the  bodily  organs  which  the  dissector 
has  on  his  table  before  him.  He  takes  them  as  if, 
just  as  he  now  finds  them,  there  they  had  always 
been,  and  there  they  must  always  be ;  as  if  benevo- 
lence had  always  gone  on  secreting  love  of  our  neigh- 
bour, and  compassion  a  desire  to  relieve  misery,  and 
conscience  right  verdicts,  just  as  the  liver  secretes 
bile.  Butler's  error  is  that  of  the  early  chemists, 
who  imagined  things  to  be  elements  which  were  not, 
but  were  capable  of  being  resolved  and  decomposed 
much  farther.  And  a  man  who  is  thrown  fairly  upon 
himself,  and  will  have  the  naked  truth,  must  feel  that 
it  is  with  Butler's  principles  and  affections  as  it  was 
with  the  elements  of  the  early  chemists ;  they  are 
capable  of  being  resolved  and  decomposed  much 
farther,  and  solid  ground  is  not  reached  until  they 
are  thus  decomposed.  "  There  is  this  principle  of 
reflection  or  conscience  in  mankind." — "True,"  the 
student  may  answer ;  "  but  what  and  whence  is  it  % 
It  had  a  genesis  of  some  kind,  and  your  account  of 
its  genesis  is  fantastic.  What  is  its  natural  genesis, 
and  what  the  natural  genesis  of  your  benevolence, 
compassion,  resentment,  and  all  the  rest  of  them1? 
Till  I  know  this,  I  do  not  know  where  I  am  in  talk- 
ing about  them." — But  into  this  vast,  dimly  lighted, 


ii.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  279 

primordial  region  of   the   natural  genesis  of   man's 
affections  and  principles,  Butler  never  enters. 

Yet  in  this  laboratory  arose  those  wonderful  com- 
pounds with  which  Butler  deals,  and  the  source  of 
his  ruling  faculty  of  conscience  is  to  be  traced  back 
thither.  There,  out  of  the  simple  primary  instinct, 
which  we  may  call  the  instinct  or  effort  to  live,  grew 
our  affections;  and  out  of  the  experience  of  those 
affections,  in  their  result  upon  the  instinctive  effort 
to  live,  grew  reflection,  practical  reason,  conscience. 
And  the  all-ruling  effort  to  live  is,  in  other  words, 
the  desire  for  happiness ;  that  desire  which  Butler, — 
because  he  identifies  it  with  self-love,  and  defines 
self-love  as  the  cool  pursuit  of  our  private  interest, 
of  our  temporal  good, — is  so  anxious  to  treat  as  only 
one  motive  out  of  many,  and  not  authoritative.  And 
this  instinct  rules  because  it  is  strongest;  although 
Butler  is  so  anxious  that  no  instinct  shall  rule  because 
it  is  strongest.  And  our  affections  of  all  kinds,  too, 
according  as  they  serve  this  deep  instinct  or  thwart 
it,  are  superior  in  strength, — not  in  present  strength, 
but  in  permanent  strength ;  and  have  degrees  of 
worth  according  to  that  superiority.  And  benevo- 
lence, or  a  regard  to  the  good  of  others,  does  often 
conflict  with  the  private  contracted  affection  of  self- 
love,  or  a  regard  to  our  private  interest,  with  which 
Butler  denies  that  it  conflicts  at  all.  But  it  has  the 
call  to  contend  with  it,  and  the  right  to  get  the  better 
of  it,  because  of  its  own  superiority  in  permanent 
strength.  And  this  superiority  it  derives  from  the 
experience,   painfully   and   slowly  acquired,   that   it 


280      LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

serves  our  instinct  to  live,  our  desire  for  happiness, 
better  than  the  private  contracted  affection  does; 
that  the  private  contracted  affection,  if  we  follow 
it,  thwarts  this  instinct.  For  men  are  solidary,  or 
co-partners ;  and  not  isolated.  And  conscience,  in  a 
question  of  conflict  between  a  regard  to  the  good  of 
others  and  a  regard  to  our  private  good,  is  the  sense 
of  experience  having  proved  and  established,  that, 
from  this  reason  of  men's  being  really  solidary,  our 
private  good  ought  in  a  conflict  of  such  kind  to  give 
way ;  and  that  our  nature  is  violated, — that  is,  our 
instinct  to  live  is  thwarted, — if  it  does  not.  That 
this  sense  finds  in  us  a  pre-adaptation  to  it,  and  a 
presentiment  of  its  truth,  may  be  inferred  from  its 
being  a  sense  of  facts  which  are  a  real  condition  of 
human  progress.  But  whatever  may  be  the  case  as 
to  our  pre-adaptation  to  it  and  presentiment  of  it,  the 
great  matter  in  favour  of  the  sense  is,  that  the  experi- 
ence reported  by  it  is  true;  that  the  thing  is  so. 
People  may  say,  they  have  not  got  this  sense  that 
their  instinct  to  live  is  served  by  loving  their  neigh- 
bour ; — they  may  say  that  they  have,  in  other  words, 
a  dull  and  uninformed  conscience.  But  that  does  not 
make  the  experience  the  less  a  true  thing,  the  real 
experience  of  the  race.  Neither  does  it  make  the 
sense  of  this  experience  to  be,  any  the  less,  genuine 
conscience.  And  it  is  genuine  conscience,  because  it 
apprehends  what  does  really  serve  our  instinct  to  live, 
or  desire  for  happiness.  And  when  Shaftesbury  sup- 
poses the  case  of  a  man  thinking  vice  and  selfishness 
to  be  truly  as  much  for  his  advantage  as  virtue  and 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  281 

benevolence,  and  concludes  that  such  a  case  is  without 
remedy,  the  answer  is :  Not  at  all ;  let  such  a  man 
get  conscience,  get  right  experience.  And  if  the  man 
does  not,  the  result  is  not  that  he  goes  on  just  as  well 
without  it ;  the  result  is,  that  he  is  lost. 

Butler,  indeed,  was  evidently  afraid  of  making  the 
desire  of  happiness  to  be  that  which  we  must  set 
out  with  in  explaining  human  nature.  And  he  was 
afraid  of  it  for  this  reason :  because  he  was  appre- 
hensive of  the  contracted  self-love,  and  of  the  con- 
tracted judgments,  of  the  individual.  But  if  we  say 
the  instinct  to  live  instead  of  the  desire  of  happiness, — 
and  the  two  mean  the  same  thing,  and  life  is  a  better 
and  more  exact  word  to  use  than  happiness,  and  it  is, 
moreover,  the  Bible-word, — then  the  difficulty  vanishes. 
For,  as  man  advances  in  his  development,  he  becomes 
aware  of  two  lives,  one  permanent  and  impersonal, 
the  other  transient  and  bound  to  our  contracted  self ; 
he  becomes  aware  of  two  selves,  one  higher  and  real, 
the  other  inferior  and  apparent ;  and  that  the  instinct 
in  him  truly  to  live,  the  desire  for  happiness,  is  served 
by  following  the  first  self  and  not  the  second.  It  is 
not  the  case  that  the  two  selves  do  not  conflict ;  they 
do  conflict.  It  is  not  true  that  the  affections  and 
impulses  of  both  alike  are,  as  Butler  says,  the  voice  of 
God  ;  the  self-love  of  Butler,  the  "  cool  study  of  our 
private  interest,"  is  not  the  voice  of  God.  It  is  a 
hasty,  erroneous  interpretation  by  us,  in  our  long, 
tentative,  up -struggling  development,  of  the  instinct 
to  live,  the  desire  for  happiness,  which  is  the  voice  of 
our  authentic  nature,  the  voice  of  God.     And  it  has 


282       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [it 

to  be  corrected  by  experience.  Love  of  our  neigh- 
bour, Butler's  benevolence,  is  the  affection  by  which 
experience  bids  us  correct  it.  Many  a  hard  lesson 
does  the  experience  involve,  many  a  heavy  blow. 
But  the  satisfaction  of  our  instinct  to  live,  of  our 
desire  for  happiness,  depends  on  our  making  and 
using  the  experience. 

And  so  true  is  this  history  of  the  two  lives  in  man, 
the  two  selves, — both  arising  out  of  the  instinct  to 
live  in  us,  out  of  the  feeling  after  happiness,  but  one 
correcting  and  at  last  dominating  the  other, — that  the 
psychology  of  Jesus  Christ,  which  without  the  least 
apparatus  of  system  is  yet  incomparably  exacter  than 
Butler's,  as  well  as  incomparably  more  illuminative 
and  fruitful, — this  psychology,  I  say,  carries  every 
one  with  it  when  it  treats  these  two  lives  in  man, 
these  two  selves,  as  an  evident,  capital  fact  of  human 
nature.  Jesus  Christ  said  :  "  Benounce  thyself  7"  and 
yet  he  also  said  :  "  What  is  a  man  profited,  if  he  gain 
the  whole  world,  and  yet  lose  himself,  be  mulcted  of 
himself V  He  said:  "I  am  come  that  men  might 
have  life,  and  might  have  it  more  abundantly ;  and 
ye  will  not  come  to  me  that  ye  may  have  life  ! ,:  And 
yet  he  also  said  :  "  Whosoever  will  save  his  life,  shall 
lose  it."  So  certain  is  it  that  we  have  two  lives,  two 
selves;  and  that  there  is  no  danger  in  making  the 
instinct  to  live,  the  desire  of  happiness,  to  be,  as  it 
really  is,  that  which  we  must  set  out  with  in  explaining 
human  nature,  if  we  add  that  only  in  the  impersonal 
life,  and  with  the  higher  self,  is  the  instinct  truly 
served  and  the  desire  truly  satisfied  ;  that  experience 


ii.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  283 

is  the  long,  painful,  irresistible,  glorious  establishment 
of  this  fact,  and  that  conscience  is  the  recognition  of 
that  experience. 

Now,  as  Butler  fears  to  set  out,  in  explaining- 
human  nature,  with  the  desire  for  happiness,  because 
he  imagines  each  man  cutting  and  carving  arbitrarily 
for  his  own  private  interest  in  pursuit  of  happiness, 
so  he  apprehends  a  man's  cutting  and  carving  arbi- 
trarily, and  with  mistaken  judgment,  for  the  happiness 
of  others.  He  supposes  a  man  fancying  that  an  over- 
balance of  happiness  to  mankind  may  be  produced  by 
committing  some  great  injustice,  and  says  very  truly 
that  a  man  is  not  on  that  account  to  commit  it. 
And  he  concludes  that  "  we  are  constituted  so  as  to 
condemn  injustice  abstracted  from  all  consideration 
what  conduct  is  likeliest  to  produce  an  overbalance  of 
happiness  or  misery."  And  he  thinks  that  his  theory 
of  our  affections  being  all  implanted  separately  in  us, 
ready-made  and  full-grown,  by  a  Divine  Author  of 
Nature,  his  theory  of  the  dignified  independence,  on 
the  part  of  virtue  and  conscience,  of  all  aim  at  happi- 
ness, is  thereby  proved.  So  far  from  it,  that  man  did 
not  even  propose  to  himself  the  worthier  aim,  as  it 
now  is  seen  by  us  to  be,  of  the  production  of  general 
happiness,  in  feeling  his  way  to  the  laws  of  virtue. 
He  proposed  to  himself  the  production  simply  of  his 
own  happiness.  But  experience  of  what  made  for 
this,  such  experience  slowly  led  him  to  the  laws  of 
virtue ; — laws  abridging  in  a  hundred  ways  what  at 
first  seemed  his  own  happiness,  and  implying  the 
solidarity  of  himself  and  his  happiness  with  the  race 


284      LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

and  theirs.  This  is  what  experience  brought  him  to, 
and  what  conscience  is  concerned  with  :  a  number  of 
laws  determining  our  conduct  in  many  ways,  and  im- 
plying our  solidarity  with  others.  But  experience 
did  not  bring  him  to  the  rule  of  every  man  just 
aiming,  "  according  to  the  best  of  his  judgment,"  at 
what  might  "  have  the  appearance  of  being  likely  to 
produce  an  overbalance  of  happiness  to  mankind  in 
their  present  state."  It  did  not  conduct  him  to  this, 
or  establish  for  him  any  such  rule  of  action  as  this. 
This  is  not  his  experience,  and  conscience  turns  on  ex- 
perience. It  is  not  in  the  form  of  carving  for  men's 
apparent  happiness  in  defiance  of  the  common  rules 
of  justice  and  virtue,  that  the  duty  of  caring  for  other 
men's  happiness  makes  itself  felt  to  us,  but  in  the 
form  of  an  obedience  to  the  common  rules  themselves 
of  justice  and  of  virtue.  Those  rules,  however,  had 
indubitably  in  great  part  their  rise  in  the  experience, 
that,  by  seeking  solely  his  own  private  happiness,  a 
man  made  shipwreck  of  life. 

In  morals,  we  must  not  rely  just  on  what  may 
"have  the  appearance  "  to  the  individual,  but  on  the 
experience  of  the  race  as  to  happiness.  To  that  ex- 
perience, the  individual,  as  one  of  the  race,  is  pro- 
foundly and  intimately  adapted.  He  may  much  more 
safely  conform  himself  to  such  experience  than  to  his 
own  crude  judgments  upon  "  appearances ; "  nay, 
such  experience  has,  if  he  deals  with  himself  fairly,  a 
much  stronger  hold  upon  his  conviction.  Butler  con- 
fuses the  foreseen  overbalance  of  happiness  or  misery, 
which,  as  the  result  of  experience  in  the  race,  has 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  285 

silently  and  slowly  determined  our  calling  actions 
virtuous  or  vicious,  with  that  overbalance  which  each 
transient  individual  may  think  he  can  foresee.  The 
transient  individual  must  not  cut  and  carve  in  the 
results  of  human  experience,  according  to  his  crude 
notions  of  what  may  constitute  human  happiness. 
His  thought  of  the  obligation  laid  upon  him  by  those 
rules  of  justice  and  virtue,  wherein  the  moral  experi- 
ence of  our  race  has  been  summed  up,  must  rather 
be  :  "  The  will  of  mortal  man  did  not  beget  it,  neither 
shall  oblivion  ever  put  it  to  sleep."  But  the  rules 
had  their  origin  in  man's  desire  for  happiness  not- 
withstanding. 

2. 

Impressive,  then,  as  the  Sermons  at  the  Rolls  are, 
and  much  as  they  contain  which  is  precious,  I  do  not 
think  that  these  sermons,  setting  forth  Butler's  theory 
of  the  foundation  of  morals,  will  satisfy  any  one  who 
in  disquietude,  and  seeking  earnestly  for  a  sure  stay, 
comes  for  help  to  them.  But  the  Sermons  at  the  Bolls 
were  published  in  1726,  when  Butler  was  but  thirty- 
four  years  old.  They  were  all  preached  in  the  eight 
years  between  1718  and  1726, — between  the  twenty- 
sixth  year  of  Butler's  life  and  the  thirty-fourth.  The 
date  is  important.  At  that  age  a  man  is,  I  think, 
more  likely  to  attempt  a  highly  systematic,  intricate 
theory  of  human  nature  and  morals,  than  he  is  after- 
wards. And  if  he  does  attempt  it,  it  cannot  well  be 
satisfactory.  The  man  is  hardly  ripe  for  it,  he  has 
not  had  enough  experience.     So  at  least,  one  is  dis- 


286       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [il. 

posed  to  say,  as  one  regards  the  thing  from  the  point 
of  view  of  a  more  mature  age  oneself.  The  Analogy 
did  not  come  till  ten  years  after  the  Sermons.  The 
Analogy  appeared  in  1736,  when  Butler  was  forty-four. 
It  is  a  riper  work  than  the  Sermons  at  the  Bolls. 
Perhaps  it  will  seem  in  me  the  very  height  of  over- 
partiality  to  the  merits  of  old  age,  of  that  unpopular 
condition  which  I  am  myself  approaching,  if  I  say, 
that  I  would  rather  have  had  the  opus  magnum  of 
such  a  man  as  Butler,  and  on  such  a  subject  as  the 
philosophy  of  religion,  ten  years  later  from  him  still. 
I  would  rather  have  had  it  from  him  at  fifty-four  than 
at  forty-four.  To  me,  the  most  entirely  satisfactory 
productions  of  Butler  are  the  Six  Sermons  on  Public 
Occasions,  all  of  them  later  than  the  Analogy;  the 
Charge  to  the  Clergy  of  Durham,  delivered  the  year 
before  his  death ;  and  a  few  fragments,  also  dating 
from  the  close  of  his  life. 

But  let  us  be  thankful  for  what  we  have.  The 
Analogy  is  a  work  of  great  power;  to  read  it,  is  a 
very  valuable  mental  exercise.  Not  only  does  it  con- 
tain, like  the  Sermons,  many  trains  of  thought  and 
many  single  observations  which  are  profound  and 
precious,  but  the  intellectual  conduct  of  the  work,  so 
to  speak,  seems  to  me  to  be  more  that  of  a  master,  to 
be  much  firmer  and  clearer,  more  free  from  embarrass- 
ment and  confusion,  than  that  of  the  Sermons.  Of 
course  the  form  of  the  work  gave  Butler  advantages 
which  with  the  form  of  a  sermon  he  could  not  have. 
But  the  mental  grasp,  too,  is,  I  think,  visibly  stronger 
in  the  Analogy. 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  287 

I  have  drawn  your  attention  to  the  terms  of  un- 
bounded praise  in  which  the  Analog)/  is  extolled.  It 
is  called  "unanswerable."  It  is  said  to  be  "the  most 
original  and  profound  work  extant  in  any  language 
on  the  philosophy  of  religion."  It  is  asserted,  that, 
by  his  Analogy,  Butler  "placed  metaphysic,  which  till 
then  had  nothing  to  support  it  but  mere  abstraction 
or  shadowy  speculation,  on  the  firm  basis  of  observa- 
tion and  experiment." 

I  have  also  told  you  what  is  to  my  mind  the  one 
sole  point  of  interest  for  us  now,  in  a  work  like  the 
Analogy.  To  those  who  search  earnestly, — amid  that 
break-up  of  traditional  and  conventional  notions  re- 
specting our  life,  its  conduct,  and  its  sanctions,  which 
is  undeniably  befalling  our  age, — for  some  clear  light 
and  some  sure  stay,  does  the  Analogy  afford  it  to 
them  ?  A  religious  work  cannot  touch  us  very  deeply 
as  a  mere  intellectual  feat.  Whether  the  Analogy  was 
or  was  not  calculated  to  make  the  loose  Deists  of 
fashionable  circles,  in  the  year  of  grace  173G,  feel 
uncomfortable,  we  do  not,  as  I  said  the  other  night, 
care  two  straws,  unless  we  hold  the  argumentative 
positions  of  those  Deists  ;  and  we  do  not.  What  has 
the  Analogy  got  to  enlighten  and  help  us  ?  is  the  one 
important  question. 

Its  object  is  to  make  men  embrace  religion.  And 
that  is  just  what  we  all  ought  most  to  desire :  to  make 
men  embrace  religion,  which  we  may  see  to  be  full  of 
what  is  salutary  for  them.  Yet  how  many  of  them 
will  not  embrace  it !  Now,  to  every  one  with  whom 
the  impediment  to  its  reception  is  not  simply  moral, 


288       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

— culpable  levity,  or  else  a  secret  leaning  to  vice, — 
Butler  professes  to  make  out  clearly  in  his  Analogy 
that  they  ought  to  embrace  it,  and  to  embrace  it, 
moreover,  in  the  form  of  what  is  called  orthodox 
Christianity,  with  its  theosophy  and  miracles.  And 
he  professes  to  establish  this  by  the  analogy  of  reli- 
gion,— first  of  natural  religion,  then  of  revealed  reli- 
gion,— to  the  constitution  and  laws  of  nature. 

Elsewhere  I  have  remarked  what  advantage  Butler 
had  against  the  Deists  of  his  own  time,  in  the  line  of 
argument  which  he  chose.  But  how  does  his  argu- 
ment in  itself  stand  the  scrutiny  of  one  who  has  no 
counter-thesis,  such  as  that  of  the  Deists,  to  make 
good  against  Butler  1  How  does  it  affect  one  who  has 
no  wish  at  all  to  doubt  or  cavil,  like  the  loose  wits  of 
fashionable  society  who  angered  Butler,  still  less  any 
wish  to  mock ;  but  who  comes  to  the  Analogy  with  an 
honest  desire  to  receive  from  it  anything  which  he 
finds  he  can  use  ? 

Now,  I  do  not  remember  to  have  anywhere  seen 
pointed  out  the  precise  break-down,  which  such  an 
inquirer  must,  it  seems  to  me,  be  conscious  of  in 
Butler's  argument  from  analogy.  The  argument  is  of 
this  kind : — The  reality  of  the  laws  of  moral  govern- 
ment of  this  world,  says  Butler,  implies,  by  analogy, 
a  like  reality  of  laws  of  moral  government  in  the 
second  world,  where  we  shall  be  hereafter.  —  The 
analogy  is,  in  truth,  used  to  prove  not  only  the  prob- 
able continuance  of  the  laws  of  moral  government,  but 
also  the  probable  existence  of  that  future  world  in 
which  they  will  be  manifested.     It  does  only  prove  the 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLEK  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  289 

probable  continuance  of  the  laws  of  moral  government 
in  the  future  world,  supposing  that  second  world  to 
exist.  But  for  that  existence  it  supplies  no  prob- 
ability whatever.  For  it  is  not  the  laws  of  moral 
government  which  give  us  proof  of  this  present  world 
in  which  they  are  manifested ;  it  is  the  experience 
that  this  present  world  actually  exists,  and  is  a  place 
in  which  these  laws  are  manifested.  Show  us,  we 
may  say  to  Butler,  that  a  like  place  presents  itself 
over  again  after  we  are  dead,  and  we  will  allow  that 
by  analogy  the  same  moral  laws  will  probably  con- 
tinue to  govern  it.  But  this  is  all  which  analogy  can 
prove  in  the  matter.  The  positive  existence  of  the 
world  to  come  must  be  proved,  like  the  positive  exist- 
ence of  the  present  world,  by  experience.  And  of  this 
experience  Butler's  argument  furnishes,  and  can  fur- 
nish, not  one  tittle. 

There  may  be  other  reasons  for  believing  in  a 
second  life  beyond  the  grave.  Christians  in  general 
consider  that  they  get  such  grounds  from  revelation. 
And  people  who  come  to  Butler  with  the  belief  al- 
ready established,  are  not  likely  to  ask  themselves 
very  closely  what  Butler's  analogical  reasoning  on  its 
behalf  is  good  for.  The  reasoning  is  exercised  in 
support  of  a  thesis  which  does  not  require  to  be  made 
out  for  them.  But  whoever  comes  to  Butler  in  a  state 
of  genuine  uncertainty,  and  has  to  lean  with  his  whole 
weight  on  Butler's  reasonings  for  support,  will  soon 
discover  their  fundamental  weakness.  The  weakness 
goes  through  the  Analogy  from  beginning  to  end, 
For  example : — 

VOL.  VII.  u 


290       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUKCH  AND  EELIGION.         [il 

1 '  The  states  of  life  in  which  we  ourselves  existed  formerly, 
in  the  womb  and  in  our  infancy,  are  almost  as  different  from 
our  present  in  mature  age  as  it  is  possible  to  conceive  any  two 
states  or  degrees  of  life  can  be.  Therefore,  that  we  are  to  exist 
hereafter  in  a  state  as  different  (suppose)  from  our  present  as 
this  is  from  the  former,  is  but  according  to  the  analogy  of  nature. " 

There  it  is  in  the  first  chapter  !  But  we  have  experi- 
ence of  the  several  different  states  succeeding  one  an- 
other in  man's  present  life;  that  is  what  makes  us 
believe  in  their  succeeding  one  another  here.  We 
have  no  experience  of  a  further  different  state  beyond 
the  limits  of  this  life.  If  we  had,  we  might  freely 
'admit  that  analogy  renders  it  probable  that  that  state 
may  be  as  unlike  to  our  actual  state,  as  our  actual 
state  is  to  our  state  in  the  womb  or  in  infancy.  But 
that  there  is  the  further  different  state  must  first,  for 
the  argument  from  analogy  to  take  effect,  be  proved 
from  experience. 
Again : — 

"Sleep,  or,  however,  a  swoon,  shows  us,  says  Butler,  "that 
our  living  powers  exist  when  they  are  not  exercised,  and  when 
there  is  no  present  capacity  for  exercising  them.  Therefore, 
there  can  no  probability  be  collected  from  the  reason  of  the 
thing  that  death  will  be  their  destruction." 

But  "the  reason  of  the  thing,"  in  this  matter,  is 
simply  experience;  and  we  have  experience  of  the 
living  powers  existing  on  through  a  swoon,  we  have 
none  of  their  existing  on  through  death. 

Or,  again,  the  form  of  the  argument  being  altered, 
but  its  vice  being  still  of  just  the  same  character : — 
"All  presumption  of  death's  being  the  destruction  of 
living  beings  must  go  upon  supposition  that  they  are 


ir.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  291 

compounded  and  so  discerptible."  So  says  Butler, 
and  then  off  he  goes  upon  a  metaphysical  argument 
about  consciousness  being  a  single  and  indivisible 
power.  But  a  doubter,  who  is  dealing  quite  simply 
with  himself,  will  stop  Butler  before  ever  his  meta- 
physical argument  begins,  and  say  :  "  Not  at  all ;  the 
presumption  of  death's  being  the  destruction  of  living 
beings  does  not  go  upon  the  supposition  that  they  are 
compounded  and  so  discerptible  ;  it  goes  upon  the  un- 
broken experience  that  the  living  powers  then  cease." 

Once  more.  "We  see  by  experience,"  says  Butler, 
"  that  men  may  lose  their  limbs,  their  organs  of  sense, 
and  even  the  greatest  part  of  their  bodies,  and  yet  re- 
main the  same  living  agents."  Yes,  we  do.  But  that 
conscious  life  is  possible  with  some  of  our  bodily  organs 
gone,  does  not  prove  that  it  is  possible  without  any. 
We  admit  the  first  because  it  is  shown  to  us  by  expe- 
rience ;  we  have  no  experience  of  the  second. 

I  say,  a  man  who  is  looking  seriously  for  firm 
ground,  cannot  but  soon  come  to  perceive  what 
Butler's  argument  in  the  Analogy  really  amounts 
to,  and  that  there  is  no  help  to  be  got  from  it. 
"There  is  no  shadow  of  anything  unreasonable," 
begins  Butler  always,  "in  conceiving  so-and-so, — 
in  the  conception  of  natural  religion,  in  the  concep- 
tion of  revealed  religion."  The  answer  of  any 
earnest  man  must  be  in  some  words  of  Butler's 
own :  "  Suppositions  are  not  to  be  looked  on  as 
true,  because  not  incredible."  "But,"  says  Butler, 
"it  is  a  fact  that  this  life  exists,  and  there  are 
analogies   in   this   life    to   the   supposed   system   of 


292       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [il 

natural  and  revealed  religion.  The  existence  of 
that  system,  therefore,  is  a  fact  also."  "Nay,"  is 
the  answer,  "  but  we  affirm  the  fact  of  this  life,  not 
because  'there  is  no  shadow  of  anything  unreason- 
able in  conceiving  it,'  but  because  we  experience  it." 
As  to  the  fact,  experience  is  the  touchstone. 

"  There  is  nothing  incredible,"  argues  Butler  again, 
"  that  God,  the  moral  and  intelligent  Author  of  all 
things,  will  reward  and  punish  men  for  their  actions 
hereafter,  for  the  whole  course  of  nature  is  a  present 
instance  of  his  exercising  that  government  over  us 
which  implies  in  it  rewarding  and  punishing."  But 
how  far  does  our  positive  experience  go  in  this 
matter?  What  is  fact  of  positive  experience  is, 
that  inward  satisfaction  (let  us  fully  concede  this 
to  Butler)  follows  one  sort  of  actions,  and  inward 
dissatisfaction  another ;  and,  moreover,  that  also 
outward  rewards  and  punishments  do  very  gene- 
rally follow  certain  actions.  In  this  sense  we  are 
punished  and  rewarded;  that  is  certain.  And  one 
must  add,  surely,  that  our  not  being  punished  and 
rewarded  more  completely  and  regularly  might  quite 
well,  one  would  think,  have  been  what  suggested  to 
mankind  the  notion  of  a  second  life,  with  a  restitu- 
tion of  all  things.  But,  be  that  as  it  may,  we  have 
no  experience, — I  say  what  is  the  mere  undoubted 
fact, — we  have  no  experience  that  it  is  a  quasi-human 
agent,  whom  Butler  calls  the  Author  of  Nature,  a 
Being  moral  and  intelligent,  who  thus  rewards  and 
punishes  us. 

But  Butler  alleges,  that  we  have,  not  indeed  expe- 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  293 

rience  of  this,  but  demonstration.  For  he  says  that 
a  uniform  course  of  operation,  this  world  as  we  see 
it,  nature,  necessarily  implies  an  operating  agent.  It 
necessarily  implies  an  intelligent  designer  with  a  will 
and  a  character,  a  ruler  all -wise  and  all-powerful. 
And  this  quasi-human  agent,  this  intelligent  designer 
with  a  will  and  a  character,  since  he  is  all-wise  and 
all-powerful,  and  since  he  governs  the  world,  and 
evidently,  by  what  we  see  of  natural  rewards  and 
punishments,  exercises  moral  government  over  us 
here,  but  admittedly  not  more  than  in  some  degree, 
not  yet  the  perfection  of  moral  government, — this 
Governor  must  be  reserving  the  complete  consum- 
mation of  his  moral  government  for  a  second  world 
hereafter.  And  the  strength  of  Butler's  argument 
against  the  Deists  lay  here :  that  they  held,  as  he 
did,  that  a  quasi -human  agent,  an  intelligent  de- 
signer with  a  will  and  a  character,  was  demonstrably 
the  author  and  governor  of  nature. 

But  in  this  supposed  demonstrably  true  starting- 
point,  common  both  to  Butler  and  to  the  Deists,  we 
are  in  full  metaphysics.  We  are  in  that  world  of 
"mere  abstraction  or  shadowy  speculation,"  from 
which  Butler  was  said  to  have  rescued  us  and  placed 
us  on  the  firm  basis  of  observation  and  experiment. 
The  proposition  that  this  world,  as  we  see  it,  neces- 
sarily implies  an  intelligent  designer  with  a  will  and 
a  character,  a  quasi-human  agent  and  governor,  can- 
not, I  think,  but  be  felt,  by  any  one  who  is  brought 
fairly  face  to  face  with  it  and  has  to  rest  everything 
upon  it,   not  to  be  self -demonstrating,  nay,  to  be 


294       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n, 

utterly  impalpable.  Evidently  it  is  not  of  the  same 
experimental  character  as  the  proposition  that  we  are 
rewarded  and  punished  according  to  our  actions ;  or 
that,  as  St.  Augustine  says  :  Sibi poena  est  omnis  inordi- 
natus  animus.  The  proposition  of  St.  Augustine  pro- 
duces, when  it  is  urged,  a  sense  of  satisfying  convic- 
tion, and  we  can  go  on  to  build  upon  it.  But  will 
any  one  say  that  the  proposition,  that  the  course  of 
nature  implies  an  operating  agent  with  a  will  and  a 
character,  produces  or  can  produce  a  like  sense  of 
satisfying  conviction,  and  can  in  like  manner  be 
built  upon  ?  It  cannot.  It  does  not  appeal,  like  the 
other,  to  what  is  solid.  It  appeals,  really,  to  the 
deep  anthropomorphic  tendency  in  man;  and  this 
tendency,  when  we  examine  the  thing  coolly,  we  feel 
that  we  cannot  trust. 

However,  the  proposition  is  thought  to  have  scien- 
tific support  in  arguments  drawn  from  being,  essence. 
But  even  thus  supported  it  never,  I  think,  can  pro- 
duce in  any  one  a  sense  of  satisfying  conviction ;  it 
produces,  at  most,  a  sense  of  puzzled  submission. 
To  build  religion,  or  anything  else  which  is  to  stand 
firm,  upon  such  a  sense  as  this,  is  vain.  Religion 
must  be  built  on  ideas  about  which  there  is  no  puzzle. 
Therefore,  in  order  to  get  rid  of  this  foundation  of 
puzzle  for  religion,  and  with  a  view  to  substituting 
a  surer  foundation,  I  have  elsewhere  tried  to  show 
in  what  confusion  the  metaphysical  arguments  drawn 
from  being,  essence,  for  an  intelligent  author  of  nature 
with  a  will  and  a  character,  have  their  rise.  The 
assertion  of  such  an  author  is  then  left  with  our 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  295 

anthropomorphic  instinct  as  its  sole  warrant,  and  is 
seen  not  to  be  a  safe  foundation  whereon  to  build  all 
our  certainties  in  religion.  It  is  not  axiomatic,  it  is 
not  experimental.  It  deals  with  what  is,  in  my 
judgment,  altogether  beyond  our  experience;  it  is 
purely  abstract  and  speculative.  A  plain  man,  when 
he  is  asked  how  he  can  affirm  that  a  house  is  made 
by  an  intelligent  designer  with  a  will  and  a  character, 
and  yet  doubt  whether  a  tree  is  made  by  an  intelli- 
gent designer  with  a  will  and  a  character,  must 
surely  answer  that  he  affirms  a  house  to  have  been 
made  by  such  a  designer  because  he  has  experience 
of  the  fact,  but  that  of  the  fact  of  a  tree  being  made 
by  such  a  designer  he  has  none.  And  if  pressed,  how 
then  can  the  tree  possibly  be  there1?  surely  the 
answer:  "Perhaps  from  the  tendency  to  grow!"  is 
not  so  very  unreasonable. 

Butler  admits  that  the  assertion  of  his  all-fore- 
seeing, all-powerful  designer,  with  a  will  and  a  char- 
acter, involves  grave  difficulties.  "Why  anything 
of  hazard  and  danger  should  be  put  upon  such  frail 
creatures  as  we  are,  may  well  be  thought  a  difficulty 
in  speculation."  But  he  appeals,  and  no  man  ever 
appealed  more  impressively  than  he,  to  the  sense 
we  must  have  of  our  ignorance.  Difficulties  of  this 
kind,  he  says,  "  are  so  apparently  and  wholly  founded 
in  our  ignorance,  that  it  is  wonderful  they  should  be 
insisted  upon  by  any  but  such  as  are  weak  enough  to 
think  they  are  acquainted  with  the  whole  system  of 
things."  And  he  speaks  of  "that  infinitely  absurd 
supposition  that  we  know  the  whole  of  the  case." 


296       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

But  does  not  the  common  account  of  God  by  theo- 
logians, does  not  Butler's  own  assertion  of  the  all- 
foreseeing,  quasi-human  designer,  with  a  will  and  a 
character,  go  upon  the  supposition  that  we  know,  at 
any  rate,  a  very  great  deal,  and  more  than  we  actually 
do  know,  of  the  case1?  And  are  not  the  difficulties 
alleged  created  by  that  supposition  1  And  is  not  the 
appeal  to  our  ignorance  in  fact  an  apj)eal  to  us, 
having  taken  a  great  deal  for  granted,  to  take 
something  more  for  granted :  —  namely,  that  what 
we  at  first  took  for  granted  has  a  satisfactory 
solution  somewhere  beyond  the  reach  of  our  know- 
ledge 1 

Then,  however,  the  argument  from  analogy  is 
again  used  to  solve  our  difficulties.  It  is  hard  to 
understand  how  an  almighty  moral  Creator  and 
Governor,  designing  the  world  as  a  place  of  moral 
discipline  for  man,  should  have  so  contrived  things 
that  the  moral  discipline  altogether  fails,  in  a  vast 
number  of  cases,  to  take  effect.  Butler,  however, 
urges,  that  the  world  may  have  been  intended  by  its 
infinite  almighty  Author  and  Governor  for  moral  dis- 
cipline, although,  even,  "the  generality  of  men  do 
not  improve  or  grow  better  in  it ; "  because  we  see 
that  "of  the  seeds  of  vegetables,  and  bodies  of 
animals,  far  the  greatest  part  decay  before  they  are 
improved  to  maturity,  and  appear  to  be  utterly 
destroyed."  But  surely  the  natural  answer  is,  that 
there  is  no  difficulty  about  millions  of  seeds  missing 
their  perfection,  because  we  do  not  suppose  nature 
an  Infinite  Almighty  and  Moral  Being  ;  but  that  the 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  297 

difficulty  in  the  other  case  is  because  we  do  suppose 
God  such  a  Being. 

However,  against  the  Deists  who  started  with 
assuming  a  quasi  -human  agent,  a  Being  of  infinite 
wisdom  and  power  with  a  will  and  a  character,  as  a 
necessary  conception,  Butler's  argument  is  very  effec- 
tive. And  he  says  expressly  that  in  his  Analogy  the 
validity  of  this  conception  "  is  a  principle  gone  upon 
as  proved,  and  generally  known  and  confessed  to  be 
proved."  But,  however,  Butler  in  his  Analogy  affirms 
also  (and  the  thing  is  important  to  be  noted)  "  the 
direct  and  fundamental  proof  of  Christianity  "  to  be, 
just  what  the  mass  of  its  adherents  have  always  sup- 
posed it  to  be  : — miracles  and  the  fulfilment  of  pro- 
phecy. And  from  a  man  like  Butler  this  dictum 
will  certainly  require  attention,  even  on  the  part  of 
an  inquirer  who  feels  that  Butler's  metaphysics,  and 
his  argument  from  analogy,  are  unavailing. 

But  any  clear-sighted  inquirer  will  soon  perceive 
that  Butler's  ability  for  handling  these  important 
matters  of  miracles  and  prophecy  is  not  in  proportion 
to  his  great  powers  of  mind,  and  to  his  vigorous  and 
effective  use  of  those  powers  on  other  topics.  Butler 
could  not  well,  indeed,  have  then  handled  miracles 
and  prophecy  satisfactorily ;  the  time  was  not  ripe 
for  it.  Men's  knowledge  increases,  their  point  of 
view  changes,  they  come  to  see  things  differently. 
That  is  the  reason,  without  any  pretence  of  intellec- 
tual superiority,  why  men  are  now  able  to  view 
miracles  and  prophecy  more  justly  than  Butler  did. 
The  insufficiency  of  his  treatment  of  them  is,  indeed, 


298       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

manifest.  Can  anything  be  more  express  or  deter- 
minate, he  asks,  than  the  fulfilment  of  prophecy  men- 
tioned in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews, — the  fulfilment 
of  the  words,  "  Sacrifice  and  offering  thou  wouldest 
not,  but  a  body  hast  thou  prepared  me,"  by  the  offer- 
ing for  man's  sins  of  the  body  of  Jesus  Christ  upon 
the  cross  1  A  man  like  Butler  could  not  nowadays 
use  an  argument  like  that.  He  could  not  be  unaware 
that  the  writer  of  the  Epistle  is  using  the  false 
rendering  of  the  Greek  Bible,  a  body  hast  thou  prepared 
me,  instead  of  the  true  rendering  of  the  original,  mine 
ears  hast  thou  opened,  and  gets  his  fulfilment  of  pro- 
phecy out  of  that  false  rendering; — a  fulfilment, 
therefore,  which  is  none  at  all. 

Neither  could  Butler  now  speak  of  the  Bible- 
history  being  all  of  it  equally  "  authentic  genuine 
history,"  or  argue  in  behalf  of  this  thesis  as  he  does. 
It  must  evidently  all  stand  or  fall  together,  he  argues; 
now,  "  there  are  characters  in  the  Bible  with  all  the 
internal  marks  imaginable  of  their  being  real."  Most 
true,  is  the  answer ;  there  is  plenty  of  fact  in  the 
Bible,  there  is  also  plenty  of  legend.  John  the 
Baptist  and  Simon  Peter  have  all  the  internal  marks 
imaginable  of  their  being  real  characters ;  granted. 
But  one  Gospel  makes  Jesus  disappear  into  Egypt 
directly  after  his  birth,  another  makes  him  stay 
quietly  on  in  Palestine.  That  John  the  Baptist  and 
Simon  Peter  are  real  characters  does  not  make  this 
consistent  history.  As  well  say  that  because  Mirabeau 
and  Danton  are  real  characters,  an  addition  to  Louis 
the  Sixteenth's  history  which  made  him  to  be  spirited 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  299 

away  from  Varennes  into  Germany,  and  then  to  come 
back  after  some  time  and  resume  his  career  in  France, 
would  not  jar.  No.  "  Things  are  what  they  are, 
and  the  consequences  of  them  will  be  what  they  will 
be."  And  the  accounts  in  the  Gospels  of  the  Holy 
Child's  incarnation  and  infancy,  and  very  many  things 
in  the  Bible  besides,  are  legends. 

Again.  "  The  belief  of  miracles  by  the  Apostles 
and  their  contemporaries  must  be  a  proof  of  those 
facts,  for  they  were  such  as  came  under  the  observa- 
tion of  their  senses."  The  simple  answer  is  :  "  But 
we  know  what  the  observation  of  men's  senses, 
under  certain  circumstances,  is  worth."  Yet  further  : 
"  Though  it  is  not  of  equal  weight,  yet  it  is  of  weight, 
that  the  martyrs  of  the  next  age,  notwithstanding 
they  were  not  eye-witnesses  of  those  facts,  as  were 
the  Apostles  and  their  contemporaries,  had  however 
full  opportunity  to  inform  themselves  whether  they 
were  true  or  not,  and  gave  equal  proof  of  their  be- 
lieving them  to  be  true."  The  simple  answer  again 
is  :  "The  martyrs  never  dreamed  of  informing  them- 
selves about  the  miracles  in  the  manner  supposed ; 
for  they  never  dreamed  of  doubting  them,  and  could 
not  have  dreamed  of  it."  If  Butler  cannot  prove 
religion  and  Christianity  by  his  reasonings  from 
metaphysics  and  from  analogy,  most  certainly  he 
will  not  prove  them  by  these  reasonings  on  Bible- 
history. 

But  the  wonderful  thing  about  the  Analogy  is  the 
poor  insignificant  result,  even  in  Butler's  own  judg- 
ment,— the  puny  total  outcome, — of  all  this  accumu- 


300       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

lated  evidence  from  analogy,  metaphysics,  and  Bible- 
history.  It  is,  after  all,  only  "  evidence  which  keeps 
the  mind  in  doubt,  perhaps  in  perplexity."  The 
utmost  it  is  calculated  to  beget  is,  "a  serious  doubt- 
ing apprehension  that  it  may  be  true."  However,  "  in 
the  daily  course  of  life,"  says  Butler,  "  our  nature 
and  condition  necessarily  require  us  to  act  upon 
evidence  much  lower  than  what  is  commonly  called 
probable."  In  a  matter,  then,  of  such  immense  prac- 
tical importance  as  religion,  where  the  bad  conse- 
quences of  a  mistake  may  be  so  incalculable,  we 
ought,  he  says,  unhesitatingly  to  act  upon  imperfect 
evidence.  "It  ought,  in  all  reason,  considering  its 
infinite  importance,  to  have  nearly  the  same  influence 
upon  practice,  as  if  it  were  thoroughly  believed  ! ,: 
And  such  is,  really,  the  upshot  of  the  Analogy.  Such 
is,  when  all  is  done,  the  "happy  alliance"  achieved 
by  it  "between  faith  and  philosophy." 

But  we  do  not,  in  the  daily  course  of  life,  act  upon 
evidence  which  we  ourselves  conceive  to  be  much  lower 
than  what  is  commonly  called  probable.  If  I  am 
going  to  take  a  walk  out  of  Edinburgh,  and  thought 
of  choosing  the  Portobello  road,  and  a  travelling 
menagerie  is  taking  the  same  road,  it  is  certainly 
possible  that  a  tiger  may  escape  from  the  menagerie 
and  devour  me  if  I  take  that  road  ;  but  the  evidence 
that  he  will  is  certainly,  also,  much  lower  than  what 
is  commonly  called  probable.  Well,  I  do  not,  on  that 
low  degree  of  evidence,  avoid  the  Portobello  road 
and  take  another.  But  the  duty  of  acting  on  such  a 
sort  of  evidence  is  really  made  by  Butler  the  motive 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  301 

for  a  man's  following  the  road  of  religion, — the  way 
of  peace. 

How  unlike,  above  all,  is  this  motive  to  the  motive 
always  supposed  in  the  book  itself  of  our  religion, 
in  the  Bible !  After  reading  the  Analogy  one  goes 
instinctively  to  bathe  one's  spirit  in  the  Bible 
again,  to  be  refreshed  by  its  boundless  certitude  and 
exhilaration.  "  The  Eternal  is  the  strength  of  my 
life!"  "The  foundation  of  God  standeth  sure!" — 
that  is  the  constant  tone  of  religion  in  the  Bible. 
"  If  I  tell  you  the  truth,  why  do  ye  not  believe  me  ? — 
the  evident  truth,  that  whoever  comes  to  me  has  life  ; 
and  evident,  because  whoever  does  come,  gets  it ! " 
That  is  the  evidence  to  constrain  our  practice  which 
is  offered  by  Christianity. 

3. 

Let  us,  then,  confess  it  to  ourselves  plainly.  The 
Analogy,  the  great  work  on  which  such  immense 
praise  has  been  lavished,  is,  for  all  real  intents  and 
purposes  now,  a  failure  ;  it  does  not  serve.  It  seemed 
once  to  have  a  spell  and  a  power ;  but  the  ZeU-Geist 
breathes  upon  it,  and  we  rub  our  eyes,  and  it  has  the 
spell  and  the  power  no  longer.  It  has  the  effect 
upon  me,  as  I  contemplate  it,  of  a  stately  and  severe 
fortress,  with  thick  and  high  walls,  built  of  old  to 
control  the  kingdom  of  evil ; — but  the  gates  are  open, 
and  the  guards  gone. 

For  to  control  the  kingdom  of  evil  the  work  was, 
no  doubt,  designed.     Whatever  may  be  the  proper 


302       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

tendencies  of  Deism  as  a  speculative  opinion,  there 
can  be  no  doubt,  I  think,  that  the  loose  Deism  of 
fashionable  circles,  as  seen  by  Butler,  had  a  tendency 
to  minimise  religion  and  morality,  to  reduce  and  im- 
pair their  authority.  Butler's  Deists  were,  in  fact, 
for  the  most  part  free-living  people  who  said,  We  are 
Deists,  as  the  least  they  could  say ;  as  another  mode 
of  saying :  "  We  think  little  of  religion  in  general, 
and  of  Christianity  in  particular."  Butler,  who  felt 
to  the  bottom  of  his  soul  the  obligation  of  religion 
in  general,  and  of  Christianity  in  particular,  set  him- 
self to  establish  the  obligation  of  them  against  these 
lax  people,  who  in  fact  denied  it.  And  the  religion 
and  the  Christianity,  of  which  Butler  set  himself 
to  establish  the  obligation,  were  religion  and  Chris- 
tianity in  the  form  then  received  and  current.  And 
in  this  form  he  could  establish  their  obligation  as 
against  his  Deistical  opponents.  But  he  could  not 
establish  them  so  as  quite  to  suit  his  own  mind  and 
soul,  so  as  to  satisfy  himself  fully. 

Hence  his  labour  and  sorrow,  his  air  of  weariness, 
depression,  and  gloom ; — the  air  of  a  man  who  cannot 
get  beyond  "  evidence  which  keeps  the  mind  in 
doubt,  perhaps  in  perplexity."  Butler  "most  readily 
acknowledges  that  the  foregoing  treatise"  (his  Analogy) 
"is  by  no  means  satisfactory ;  very  far  indeed  from 
it."  He  quotes  the  Preacher's  account  of  what  he 
himself  had  found  in  life,  as  the  true  account  of  what 
man  may  expect  here  below : — "  Great  ignorance  of 
the  works  of  God  and  the  method  of  his  providence 
in  the  government  of  the  world ;  great  labour  and 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  303 

weariness  in  the  search  and  observation  he  employs 
himself  about ;  and  great  disappointment,  pain,  and 
even  vexation  of  mind  upon  that  which  he  remarks 
of  the  appearances  of  things  and  of  what  is  going 
forward  upon  this  earth."  "  The  result  of  the 
Preacher's  whole  review  and  inspection  is,"  says 
Butler,  "  sorrow,  perplexity,  a  sense  of  his  necessary 
ignorance."  That  is  certainly  a  true  description  of 
the  impression  the  Preacher  leaves  on  us  of  his  own 
frame  of  mind;  and  it  is  not  a  bad  description  of 
Butler's  frame  of  mind  also.  But  so  far  is  it  from 
being  a  true  description  of  the  right  tone  and  temper 
of  man  according  to  the  Bible-conception  of  it,  that 
the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes,  which  seems  to  recommend 
that  temper,  was  nearly  excluded  from  the  Canon  on 
this  very  account,  and  was  only  saved  by  its  animat- 
ing return,  in  its  last  verses,  to  the  genuine  tradition 
of  Israel :  "  Let  us  hear  the  conclusion  of  the  whole 
matter :  fear  God  and  keep  his  commandments,  for 
that  is  the  whole  duty  of  man." 

But  yet,  in  spite  of  his  gloom,  in  spite  of  the 
failure  of  his  Analogy  to  serve  our  needs,  Butler  re- 
mains a  personage  of  real  grandeur  for  us.  This 
pathetic  figure,  with  its  earnestness,  its  strenuous 
rectitude,  its  firm  faith  both  in  religion  and  in  reason, 
does  in  some  measure  help  us,  does  point  the  way 
for  us.  Butler's  profound  sense,  that  inattention  to 
religion  implies  "  a  dissolute  immoral  temper  of 
mind,"  engraves  itself  upon  his  readers'  thoughts 
also,  and  comes  to  govern  them.  His  conviction, 
that  religion  and  Christianity  do  somehow  "  in  them- 


304       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

selves  entirely  fall  in  with  our  natural  sense  of 
things,"  that  they  are  true,  and  that  their  truth, 
moreover,  is  somehow  to  be  established  and  justified 
on  plain  grounds  of  reason, — this  wholesome  and  in- 
valuable conviction,  also,  gains  us  as  we  read  him. 
The  ordinary  religionists  of  Butler's  day  might  well 
be  startled,  as  they  were,  by  this  bishop  with  the 
strange,  novel,  and  unhallowed  notion,  full  of  danger- 
ous consequence,  of  "  referring  mankind  to  a  law  of 
nature  or  virtue,  written  on  their  hearts."  The 
pamphleteer,  who  accused  Butler  of  dying  a  Papist, 
declares  plainly  that  he  for  his  part  "  has  no  better 
opinion  of  the  rcertainty,  clearness,  uniformity,  uni- 
versality, etc.,  of  this  law,  than  he  has  of  the  import- 
ance of  external  religion."  But  Butler  did  believe  in 
the  certainty  of  this  law.  It  was  the  real  foundation 
of  things  for  him.  With  awful  reverence,  he  saluted, 
and  he  set  himself  to  study  and  to  follow,  this  "course 
of  life  marked  out  for  man  by  nature,  whatever  that 
nature  be."  And  he  was  for  perfect  fairness  of  mind 
in  considering  the  evidence  for  this  law,  or  for  any- 
thing else.  "  It  is  fit  things  be  stated  and  considered 
as  they  really  are."  "  Things  are  what  they  are,  and 
the  consequences  of  them  will  be  what  they  will  be ; 
why,  then,  should  we  desire  to  be  deceived  ? "  And 
he  believed  in  reason.  "I  express  myself  with 
caution,  lest  I  should  be  mistaken  to  vilify  reason, 
which  is  indeed  the  only  faculty  we  have  wherewith 
to  judge  concerning  anything,  even  religion  itself." 
Such  was  Butler's  fidelity  to  that  sacred  light  to 
which  religion  makes  too  many  people  false, — reason. 


II.]  BISHOP  BUTLEE  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  305 

It  always  seems  to  me,  that  with  Butler's  deep 
sense  that  "  the  government  of  the  world  is  carried 
on  by  general  laws;"  with  his  deep  sense,  too,  of 
our  ignorance, — nay,  that  "it  is  indeed,  in  general, 
no  more  than  effects  that  the  most  knowing  are 
acquainted  with,  for  as  to  causes,  they  are  as  entirely 
in  the  dark  as  the  most  ignorant," — he  would  have 
found  no  insuperable  difficulty  in  bringing  himself  to 
regard  the  power  of  "the  law  of  virtue  we  are  born 
under,"  as  an  idea  equivalent  to  the  religious  idea  of 
the  power  of  God,  without  determining,  or  thinking 
that  he  had  the  means  to  determine,  whether  this 
power  was  a  quasi -human  agent  or  not.  But  a 
second  world  under  a  righteous  judge,  who  should 
redress  the  imperfect  balance  of  things  as  they  are 
in  this  world,  seemed  to  Butler  indispensable.  Yet 
no  one  has  spoken  more  truly  and  nobly  than  he,  of 
the  natural  victoriousness  of  virtue,  even  in  this 
world.  He  finds  a  tendency  of  virtue  to  prevail, 
which  he  can  only  describe  as  "  somewhat  moral  in 
the  essential  constitution  of  things;"  as  "a  declara- 
tion from  the  Author  of  Nature,  determinate  and 
not  to  be  evaded,  in  favour  of  virtue  and  against 
vice."  True,  virtue  is  often  overborne.  But  this  is 
plainly  a  perversion.  "Our  finding  virtue  to  be 
hindered  from  procuring  to  itself  its  due  superiority 
and  advantages,  is  no  objection  against  its  having,  in 
the  essential  nature  of  the  thing,  a  tendency  to  pro- 
cure them."  And  he  can  see,  he  says,  "in  the  nature 
of  things,  a  tendency  in  virtue  and  vice  to  produce 
the  good  and  bad  effects  now  mentioned,  in  a  greater 

VOL.  VII.  X 


306       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [n. 

degree  than  they  do  in  fact  produce  them."  Length 
of  time,  however,  is  required  for  working  this  fully 
out;  whereas  "men  are  impatient  and  for  precipi- 
tating things."  "There  must  be  sufficient  length  of 
time ;  the  complete  success  of  virtue,  as  of  reason, 
cannot,  from  the  nature  of  the  thing,  be  otherwise 
than  gradual."  "  Still,  the  constitution  of  our  nature 
is  as  it  is ;  our  happiness  and  misery  are  trusted  to 
our  conduct,  and  made  to  depend  upon  it."  And 
our  comfort  of  hope  is,  that  "though  the  higher 
degree  of  distributive  justice,  which  nature  points 
out  and  leads  towards,  is  prevented  for  a  time  from 
taking  place,  it  is  by  obstacles  which  the  state  of  this 
world  unhappily  throws  in  its  way,  and  which  are  in 
their  nature  temporary."  And  Butler  supposes  and 
describes  an  ideal  society  upon  earth,  where  "this 
happy  tendency  of  virtue,"  as  he  calls  it,  should  at 
last  come  to  prevail,  in  a  way  which  brings  straight 
to  our  thoughts  and  to  our  lips  the  Bible-expression : 
the  kingdom  of  God.  However,  Butler  decides  that 
good  men  cannot  now  unite  sufficiently  to  bring 
this  better  society  about;  that  it  cannot,  therefore, 
be  brought  about  in  the  present  known  course  of 
nature,  and  that  it  must  be  meant  to  come  to  pass 
in  another  world  beyond  the  grave. 

Now,  the  very  expression  which  I  have  just  used, 
the  kingdom  of  God,  does  certainly,  however  little  it 
may  at  present  be  usual  with  religious  people  to 
think  so,  it  does  certainly  suggest  a  different  conclu- 
sion from  Butler's.  It  does  point  to  a  transformation 
of  this  present  world  through  the  victory  of  what 


II.]  BISHOr  BUTLER  AND  THE  ZEIT-GEIST.  307 

Butler  calls  virtue,  and  what  the  Bible  calls  righteous- 
ness, and  what  in  general  religious  people  call  good- 
ness ;  it  does  suggest  such  transformation  as  possible. 
This  transformation  is  the  great  original  idea  of  the 
Christian  Gospel ;  nay,  it  is  properly  the  Gospel  or 
good  news  itself.  "The  kingdom  of  God  is  at  hand," 
said  Jesus  Christ,  when  he  first  came  preaching ; 
"  repent,  and  believe  the  good  news."  Jesus  "  talked" 
to  the  people  "  about  the  kingdom  of  God."  He  told 
the  young  man,  whom  he  called  to  follow  him,  to  "go 
and  spread  the  news  of  the  kingdom  of  God."  In  the 
Acts,  we  find  the  disciples  "  preaching  the  kingdom 
of  God,"  "  testifying  concerning  the  kingdom  of  God," 
still  in  their  Master's  manner  and  words.  And  it  is 
undeniable  that  whoever  thinks  that  virtue  and  good- 
ness will  finally  come  to  prevail  in  this  present  world 
so  as  to  transform  it,  who  believes  that  they  are  even 
now  surely  though  slowly  prevailing,  and  himself  does 
all  he  can  to  help  the  work  forward, — as  he  acquires 
in  this  way  an  experimental  sense  of  the  truth  of 
Christianity  which  is  of  the  strongest  possible  kind, 
so  he  is,  also,  entirely  in  the  tradition  and  ideas  of 
the  Founder  of  Christianity.  In  like  manner,  who- 
ever places  immortal  life  in  coming  to  live,  even  here 
in  this  present  world,  with  that  higher  and  im- 
personal life  on  which,  in  speaking  of  self-love,  we 
insisted, — and  in  thus  no  longer  living  to  himself 
but  living,  as  St.  Paul  says,  to  God, — does  entirely 
conform  himself  to  the  doctrine  and  example  of  the 
Saviour  of  mankind,  Jesus  Christ,  who  "  annulled 
death,   and   brought   life   and   immortality  to   light 


308       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.         [ii. 

through  the  Gospel."  And  could  Butler,  whose 
work  has  many  precious  and  instructive  pointings 
this  way,  have  boldly  entered  the  way  and  steadily 
pursued  it,  his  work  would  not,  I  think,  have  borne 
the  embarrassed,  inconclusive,  and  even  mournful 
character,  which  is  apparent  in  it  now. 

Let  us  not,  however,  overrate  the  mournfulness  of 
this  great  man,  or  underrate  his  consolations.     The 
power  of  religion  which  actuated  him  was,  as  is  the 
case  with  so  many  of  us,   better,  profounder,   and 
happier,  than  the  scheme  of  religion  which  he  could 
draw  out  in  his  books.     Nowhere  does  this  power 
show  itself  more  touchingly  than  in  a  fragment  or 
two, — memoranda  for  his  own  use, — which  are  among 
the  last  things  that  his  pen  wrote  before  death  brushed 
it  from  his  hand  for  ever.     "  Hunger  and  thirst  after 
righteousness,"  he  writes,  "  till  filled  with  it  by  being 
made  partaker  of  the  divine  nature  !"     And  again 
he  writes,  using  and  underscoring  words  of  the  Latin 
Vulgate  which  are  more  earnest  and  expressive  than 
the  words   of   our   English   version   in   that   place : 
"Sicut  oculi  servorum  intenti  sunt  ad  manum  domin- 
orum  suorum,  sicut   oculi  ancillce   ad  manum  domince 
sum,  ita  oculi  nostri  ad  Deum  nostrum,  donee  misereatur 
nostri ; — As  the  eyes  of  servants  are  bent  towards  the 
hand  of  their  masters,  and  the   eyes  of  a  maiden 
towards  the  hand  of  her  mistress,  even  so  are  our 
eyes  towards  our  God,  until  he  have  mercy  upon  us." 
Let  us  leave  Butler,  after  all  our  long  scrutiny  of 
him,  with  these  for  his  last  words  ! 


III. 


THE  CHUECH  OF  ENGLAND.1 

I  HAVE  heard  it  confidently  asserted,  that  the  Church 
of  England  is  an  institution  so  thoroughly  artificial, 
and  of  which  the  justification,  if  any  justification 
for  it  can  be  found,  must  be  sought  in  reasons  so 
extremely  far-fetched,  that  only  highly  trained  and 
educated  people  can  be  made  to  see  that  it  has  a 
possible  defence  at  all,  and  that  to  undertake  its 
defence  before  a  plain  audience  of  working  men 
would  be  hopeless.  It  would  be  very  interesting 
to  try  the  experiment ;  and  I  had  long  had  a  half- 
formed  design  of  endeavouring  to  show  to  an  audience 
of  working  men  the  case,  as  I  for  my  part  conceived 
it,  on  behalf  of  the  Church  of  England.  But  mean- 
while there  comes  to  me  my  friend,  your  President, 
and  reminds  me  of  an  old  request  of  his  that  I  should 
some  day  speak  in  this  hall,  and  presses  me  to  comply 
with  it  this  very  season.  And  if  I  am  to  speak  at  Sion 
College,  and  to  the  London  clergy,  and  at  this  junc- 

1  The  following  discourse  was  delivered  as  an  address  to  the 
London  clergy  at  Sion  College. 


310       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [in. 

ture,  how  can  I  help  remembering  my  old  design  of 
speaking  about  the  Church  of  England ; — remember- 
ing it,  and  being  tempted,  though  before  a  very 
different  audience,  to  take  that  subject  1 

Jeremy  Taylor  says  :  "  Every  minister  ought  to 
concern  himself  in  the  faults  of  them  that  are  pre- 
sent, but  not  of  the  absent."  "Every  minister,"  he 
says  again,  "  ought  to  preach  to  his  hearers  and  urge 
their  duty;  St.  John  the  Baptist  told  the  soldiers 
what  the  soldiers  should  do,  but  troubled  not  their 
heads  with  what  was  the  duty  of  the  Scribes  and 
Pharisees."  And  certainly  one  should  not  defend 
the  Church  of  England  to  an  audience  of  clergy  and 
to  an  audience  of  artisans  in  quite  the  same  way. 
But  perhaps  one  ought  not  to  care  to  put  at  all 
before  the  clergy  the  case  for  the  Church  of  England, 
but  rather  one  should  bring  before  them  the  case 
against  it.  For  the  case  of  the  Church  of  England 
is  supposed  to  be  their  own  case,  and  they  are  the 
parties  interested ;  and  to  commend  their  own  case 
to  the  parties  interested  is  useless,  but  what  may  do 
them  most  good  is  rather  to  show  them  its  defects. 
And  in  this  view,  the  profitable  thing  for  the  London 
clergy  at  Sion  College  to  hear,  would  be,  perhaps,  a 
lecture  on  disestablishment,  an  exhortation  to  "  happy 
despatch." 

Yet  this  is  not  so,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the 
Church  of  England  is  not  a  private  sect  but  a  national 
institution.  There  can  be  no  greater  mistake  than  to 
regard  the  cause  of  the  Church  of  England  as  the 
cause  of  the  clergy,  and  the  clergy  as  the  parties  con- 


in.]        THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.         311 

cerned  for  the  maintenance  of  the  Church  of  England. 
The  clergy  are  a  very  small  minority  of  the  nation. 
As  the  Church  of  England  -will  not  be  abolished  to 
gratify  the  jealousy  of  this  and  that  private  sect,  also 
a  small  minority  of  the  nation,  so  neither  will  it  be 
maintained  to  gratify  the  interest  of  the  clergy. 
Public  institutions  must  have  public  reasons  for 
existing;  and  if  at  any  time  there  arise  circum- 
stances and  dangers  which  induce  a  return  to  those 
reasons,  so  as  to  set  them  in  a  clear  light  to  oneself 
again  and  to  make  sure  of  them,  the  clergy  may  with 
just  as  much  propriety  do  this,  or  assist  at  its  being 
done, — nay,  they  are  as  much  bound  to  do  it, — as  any 
other  members  of  the  community. 

But  some  one  will  perhaps  be  disposed  to  say,  that 
though  there  is  no  impropriety  in  your  hearing  the 
Church  of  England  defended,  yet  there  is  an  impro- 
priety in  my  defending  it  to  you.  A  man  who  has 
published  a  good  deal  which  is  at  variance  with  the 
body  of  theological  doctrine  commonly  received  in 
the  Church  of  England  and  commonly  preached  by 
its  ministers,  cannot  well,  it  may  be  thought,  stand 
up  before  the  clergy  as  a  friend  to  their  cause  and  to 
that  of  the  Church.  Professed  ardent  enemies  of  the 
Church  have  assured  me  that  I  am  really,  in  their 
opinion,  one  of  the  worst  enemies  that  the  Church 
has, — a  much  worse  enemy  than  themselves.  Per- 
haps that  opinion  is  shared  by  some  of  those  who 
now  hear  me.  I  make  bold  to  say  that  it  is  totally 
erroneous.  It  is  founded  in  an  entire  misconception 
of  the  character  and  scope  of  what  I  have  written 


312       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [in. 

concerning  religion.  I  regard  the  Church  of  England 
as,  in  fact,  a  great  national  society  for  the  promotion 
of  what  is  commonly  called  goodness,  and  for  promot- 
ing it  through  the  most  effectual  means  possible,  the 
only  means  which  are  really  and  truly  effectual  for 
the  object :  through  the  means  of  the  Christian  reli- 
gion and  of  the  Bible.  This  plain  practical  object  is 
undeniably  the  object  of  the  Church  of  England  and 
of  the  clergy.  "  Our  province,"  says  Butler,  whose 
sayings  come  the  more  readily  to  my  mind  because  I 
have  been  very  busy  with  him  lately,  "  our  province 
is  virtue  and  religion,  life  and  manners,  the  science  of 
improving  the  temper  and  making  the  heart  better. 
This  is  the  field  assigned  us  to  cultivate ;  how  much 
it  has  lain  neglected  is  indeed  astonishing.  He  who 
should  find  out  one  rule  to  assist  us  in  this  work 
would  deserve  infinitely  better  of  mankind  than  all  the 
improvers  of  other  knowledge  put  together."  This 
is  indeed  true  religion,  true  Christianity.  111%  sunt 
veri  fideles  Tui,  says  the  "  Imitation,"  qui  totam  vitam 
suam  ad  emendationem  disponunt.  Undoubtedly  this  is 
so ;  and  the  more  we  come  to  see  and  feel  it  to  be  so, 
the  more  shall  we  get  a  happy  sense  of  clearness  and 
certainty  in  religion. 

Now,  to  put  a  new  construction  upon  many  things 
that  are  said  in  the  Bible,  to  point  out  errors  in  the 
Bible,  errors  in  the  dealings  of  theologians  with  it,  is 
exactly  the  sort  of  "  other  knowledge  "  which  Butler 
disparages  by  comparison  with  a  knowledge  more 
important.  Perhaps  he  goes  too  far  when  he  dis- 
parages it  so  absolutely  as  in  another  place  he  does, 


in.]  THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  313 

where  he  makes  Moses  conclude,  and  appears  to  agree 
with  Moses  in  concluding,  that  "tlie  only  knowledge, 
which  is  of  any  avail  to  us,  is  that  which  teaches  us 
our  duty,  or  assists  us  in  the  discharge  of  it."  "If," 
says  he,  "  the  discoveries  of  men  of  deep  research  and 
curious  inquiry  serve  the  cause  of  virtue  and  religion, 
in  the  way  of  proof,  motive  to  practice,  or  assistance 
in  it  \  or  if  they  tend  to  render  life  less  unhappy  and 
promote  its  satisfactions,  then  they  are  most  usefully 
employed ;  but  bringing  things  to  light,  alone  and  of 
itself,  is  of  no  manner  of  use  any  otherwise  than  as 
entertainment  and  diversion."  "Bringing  things  to 
light "  is  not  properly  to  be  spoken  of,  I  think,  quite 
in  this  fashion.  Still,  with  the  low  comparative  rank 
which  Butler  assigns  to  it  we  will  not  quarrel.  And 
when  Butler  urges  that  "  knowledge  is  not  our  proper 
happiness,"  and  that  "men  of  research  and  curious 
inquiry  should  just  be  put  in  mind  not  to  mistake 
what  they  are  doing,"  we  may  all  of  us  readily  admit 
that  his  admonitions  are  wise  and  salutary. 

And  therefore  the  object  of  the  Church,  which  is 
in  large  the  promotion  of  goodness,  and  the  business 
of  the  clergy,  which  is  to  teach  men  their  duty  and  to 
assist  them  in  the  discharge  of  it,  do  really  and  truly 
interest  me  more,  and  do  appear  in  my  eyes  as  things 
more  valuable  and  important,  than  the  object  and 
business  pursued  in  those  writings  of  mine  which  are 
in  question, — writings  which  seek  to  put  a  new  con- 
struction on  much  in  the  Bible,  to  alter  the  current 
criticism  of  it,  to  invalidate  the  conclusions  of  theo- 
logians from  it.     If  the  two  are  to  conflict,  I  had 


314       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [in. 

rather  that  it  should  be  the  object  and  business  of 
those  writings  which  should  have  to  give  way.  Most 
certainly  the  establishment  of  an  improved  biblical 
criticism,  or  the  demolition  of  the  systems  of  theo- 
logians, will  never  in  itself  avail  to  teach  men  their 
•  duty  or  to  assist  them  in  the  discharge  of  it.  Per- 
haps,  even,  no  one  can  very  much  give  himself  to 
such  objects  without  running  some  risk  of  over- 
valuing their  importance  and  of  being  diverted  by 


them  from  practice. 


But  there  are  times  when  practice  itself,  when  the 
very  object  of  the  Church  and  of  the  clergy, — the 
promotion  of  goodness  through  the  instrumentality 
of  the  Christian  religion  and  of  the  Bible, — is  en- 
dangered, with  many  persons,  from  the  predominance 
of  the  systems  of  theologians,  and  from  the  want  of  a 
new  and  better  construction  than  theirs  to  put  upon 
the  Bible.  And  ours  is  a  time  of  this  kind ;  such,  at 
least,  is  my  conviction.  Nor  are  persons  free  to  say 
that  we  had  better  all  of  us  stick  to  practice,  and 
resolve  not  to  trouble  ourselves  with  speculative  ques- 
tions of  biblical  and  theological  criticism.  No ;  such 
questions  catch  men  in  a  season  and  manner  which 
does  not  depend  on  their  own  will,  and  often  their 
whole  spirit  is  bewildered  by  them  and  their  former 
hold  on  practice  seems  threatened.  Well  then,  at 
this  point  and  for  those  persons,  the  criticism  which 
I  have  attempted  is  designed  to  come  in ;  when,  for 
want  of  some  such  new  criticism,  their  practical  hold 
on  the  Bible  and  on  the  Christian  religion  seems  to 
be  threatened.      The  criticism  is  not  presented  as 


in.]  THE  CHUECH  OF  ENGLAND.  315 

something  universally  salutary  and  indispensable,  far 
less  as  any  substitute  for  a  practical  hold  upon  Chris- 
tianity and  the  Bible,  or  of  at  all  comparable  value 
with  it.  The  user  may  even,  if  he  likes,  having  in 
view  the  risks  which  beset  practice  from  the  mis- 
employment  of  such  criticism,  say  while  he  uses  it 
that  he  is  but  making  himself  friends  through  the 
mammon  of  unrighteousness.         <■  ~— *- *-**• 

It  is  evident  that  the  author  of  such  criticism, 
holding  this  to  be  its  relation  to  the  object  of  the 
Church  of  England  and  to  the  business  of  the  clergy, 
and  holding  it  so  cheap  by  comparison  with  that 
object  and  that  business,  is  by  no  means  constituted, 
through  the  fact  of  his  having  published  it,  an  enemy 
of  the  Church  and  clergy,  or  precluded  from  feeling 
and  expressing  a  hearty  desire  for  their  preservation. 

II. 

» 
I  have  called  the  Church  of  England, — to  give  the 

plainest  and  most  direct  idea  I  could  of  its  real  reason 

for  existing, — a  great  national  society  for  the  promotion 

of  goodness.     Nothing  interests  people,   after  all,  so 

much  as  goodness  ; 1  and  it  is  in  human  nature  that 

what  interests  men  very  much  they  should  not  leave 

to  private  and  chance  handling,  but  should  give  to  it 

a  public  institution,     There  may  be  very  important 

things  to  which  public  institution  is  not  given ;  but 

1  •  •  We  have  no  clear  conception  of  any  positive  moral  attri- 
bute in  the  Supreme  Being,  but  what  may  be  resolved  up  into 
goodness." — Butler,  in  Sermon  Upon  the  Love  of  Our  Kcighboicr. 


316       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [in. 

it  will  generally  turn  out,  we  shall  find,  that  they 
are  things  of  which  the  whole  community  does  not 
strongly  feel  the  importance.  Art  and  literature  are 
very  important  things,  and  art  and  literature,  it  is 
often  urged,  are  not  matters  of  public  institution  in 
England ;  why,  then,  should  religion  be  1  The  answer 
is,  that  so  far  as  art  and  literature  are  not  matters 
of  public  institution  like  religion,  this  is  because  the 
whole  community  has  not  felt  them  to  be  of  vital 
interest  and  importance  to  it,  as  it  feels  religion  to 
be.  In  only  one  famous  community,  perhaps,  has  the 
people  at  large  felt  art  and  literature  to  be  necessaries 
of  life,  as  with  us  the  people  at  large  has  felt  religion 
to  be.  That  community  was  ancient  Athens.  And 
in  ancient  Athens  art  and  literature  were  matters  of 
public  and  national  institution,  like  religion.  In  the 
Christian  nations  of  modern  Europe  we  find  religion, 
alone  of  spiritual  concerns,  to  have  had  a  regular 
public  organisation  given  to  it,  because  alone  of 
spiritual  concerns  religion  was  felt  by  every  one  to 
interest  the  nation  profoundly,  just  like  social  order 
and  security. 

It  is  true,  we  see  a  great  community  across  the 
Atlantic,  the  United  States  of  America,  where  it 
cannot  be  said  that  religion  does  not  interest  people, 
and  where,  notwithstanding,  there  is  no  public  insti- 
tution and  organisation  of  religion.  But  that  is 
because  the  United  States  were  colonised  by  people 
who,  from  special  circumstances,  had  in  this  country 
been  led  to  adopt  the  theory  and  the  habit,  then 
novel,  of  separatism;  and  who  carried  the  already 


in.]        THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.        317 

formed  theory  and  habit  into  America,  and  there 
gave  effect  to  it.  The  same  is  to  be  said  of  some 
of  our  chief  colonial  dependencies.  Their  communi- 
ties are  made  up,  in  a  remarkably  large  proportion, 
out  of  that  sort  and  class  of  English  people  in  whom 
the  theory  and  habit  of  separatism  exist  formed, 
owing  to  certain  old  religious  conflicts  in  this  country, 
already.  The  theory  and  the  habit  of  separatism  soon 
make  a  common  form  of  religion  seem  a  thing  both 
impossible  and  undesirable  \  and  without  a  common 
form  of  religion  there  cannot  well  be  a  public  institu- 
tion of  it.  Still,  all  this  does  not  make  the  public 
institution  of  a  thing  so  important  as  religion  to  be 
any  the  less  the  evident  natural  instinct  of  mankind, 
their  plain  first  impulse  in  the  matter ;  neither  does 
it  make  that  first  impulse  to  be  any  the  less  in  itself 
a  just  one. 

For  a  just  one  it  is  in  itself,  surely.  All  that  is 
said  to  make  it  out  to  be  so,  said  by  Butler  for 
instance, — whom  I  have  already  quoted,  and  whose 
practical  view  of  things  is  almost  always  so  sound  and 
weighty, — seems  to  me  of  an  evidence  and  solidity 
quite  indisputable.  The  public  institution  of  religion, 
he  again  and  again  insists,  is  "  a  standing  publication 
of  the  Gospel,"  "a  serious  call  upon  men  to  attend 
to  it,"  and  therefore  of  an  "effect  very  important 
and  valuable."  A  visible  Church,  with  a  publicly 
instituted  form  of  religion  is,  he  says,  "like  a  city 
upon  a  hill, — a  standing  memorial  to  the  world  of 
the  duty  which  we  owe  our  Maker ;  to  call  men  con- 
tinually, both  by  example  and  instruction,  to  attend 


318       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [in. 

to  it,  and,  by  the  form  of  religion  ever  before  their 
eyes,  to  remind  them  of  the  reality ;  to  be  the  reposi- 
tory of  the  oracles  of  God ;  to  hold  up  the  light  of 
revelation  in  aid  to  that  of  nature,  and  to  propagate 
it  throughout  all  generations  to  the  end  of  the  world." 
"  That  which  men  have  accounted  religion,"  he  says 
again,  in  his  charge  to  the  clergy  of  Durham,  "  has 
had,  generally  speaking,  a  great  and  conspicuous  part 
in  all  public  appearances,  and  the  face  of  it  has  been 
kept  up  with  great  reverence  throughout  all  ranks 
from  the  highest  to  the  lowest ;  and  without  some- 
what of  this  nature,  piety  will  grow  languid  even 
among  the  better  sort  of  men,  and  the  worst  will  go 
on  quietly  in  an  abandoned  course,  with  fewer  inter- 
ruptions from  within  than  they  would  have,  were 
religious  reflections  forced  oftener  upon  their  minds, 
and,  consequently,  with  less  probability  of  their 
amendment."  Here,  I  say,  is  surely  abundant  reason 
suggested,  if  the  thing  were  not  already  clear  enough 
of  itself,  why  a  society  for  the  promotion  of  goodness, 
such  as  the  Church  of  England  in  its  fundamental 
design  is,  should  at  the  same  time  be  a  national 
society,  a  society  with  a  public  character  and  a 
publicly  instituted  form  of  proceeding. 

And  yet  with  what  enemies  and  dangers  is  this 
reasonable  and  natural  arrangement  now  encompassed 
here  !  I  open  the  Fortnightly  Review  for  the  beginning 
of  the  present  year,1  in  order  to  read  the  political 
summary,  sure  to  be  written  with  ability  and  vigour, 
and  to  find  there  what  lines  of  agitation  are  in  pro- 

1  1876. 


in.]        THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.        319 

spect  for  us.  Well,  I  am  told  in  the  political  sum- 
mary that  the  disestablishment  of  the  Church  of 
England  is  "a  question  which  the  very  Spirit  of 
Time  has  borne  on  into  the  first  place."  The  Spirit 
of  Time  is  a  personage  for  whose  operations  I  have 
myself  the  greatest  respect ;  whatever  he  does,  is,  in 
my  opinion,  of  the  gravest  effect.  And  he  has  borne, 
we  are  told,  the  question  of  the  disestablishment  of 
the  Church  of  England  into  the  very  first  rank  of 
questions  in  agitation.  "  The  agitation,"  continues 
the  summarist,  "  is  the  least  factitious  of  any  political 
movement  that  has  taken  place  in  our  time.  It  is 
the  one  subject  on  which  you  are  most  certain  of 
having  a  crowded  meeting  in  any  large  town  in  Eng- 
land. It  is  the  one  bond  of  union  between  the  most 
important  groups  of  Liberals.  Even  the  Tapers  and 
Tadpoles  of  politics  must  admit  that  this  party  is 
rapidly  becoming  really  formidable." 

Then  our  writer  proceeds  to  enumerate  the  forces 
of  his  party.  It  comprises  practically,  he  says,  the 
whole  body  of  the  Protestant  Nonconformists;  this 
is,  indeed,  a  thing  of  course.  But  the  Wesleyans, 
too,  he  adds,  are  almost  certainly  about  to  join  it ; 
while  of  the  Catholics  it  is  calculated  that  two-thirds 
would  vote  for  "  the  policy  of  taking  away  artificial 
advantages  from  a  rival  hierarchy." 

"From  within  tlio  Church  itself,"  he  goes  on,  "there  are 
gradually  coming  allies  of  each  of  the  three  colours  :  Sacra- 
mentalists,  weary  of  the  Erastian  bonds  of  Parliament  and  the 
Privy  Council  ;  Evangelicals,  exasperated  by  State  connivance 
with  a  Romanising  reaction  ;  Broad  Churchmen,  who  are  begin- 
ning to  see,  first,  that  a  laity  in  a  Free  Church  would  hold  the 


320       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUECH  AND  RELIGION.       [ill. 

keys  of  the  treasury,  and  would  therefore  be  better  able  than 
they  are  now  to  secure  liberality  of  doctrine  in  their  clergy ; 
and,  secondly,  are  beginning  to  see  that  the  straining  to  make 
the  old  bottles  of  rite  and  formulary  hold  the  wine  of  new 
thought  withers  up  intellectual  manliness,  straightforwardness, 
and  vigorous  health  of  conscience,  both  in  those  who  prac- 
tise these  economies  and  in  those  whom  their  moderation 
fascinates." 

The  thing  could  not  well  be  more  forcibly  stated, 
and  the  prospect  for  the  Established  Church  does 
indeed,  as  thus  presented,  seem  black  enough.  But 
we  have  still  to  hear  of  the  disposition  of  the  great 
body  of  the  flock,  of  the  working  multitudes.  "As 
for  the  working  classes,"  the  writer  says,  "the  reli- 
gious portion  would  follow  the  policy  of  the  sect  to 
which  the  individual  happened  to  belong ;  while  that 
portion  which  is  not  attached  either  to  church  or 
chapel,  apart  from  personal  or  local  considerations  of 
accidental  force,  would  certainly  go  for  disestablish- 
ment. Not  a  single  leader  of  the  industrial  class, 
with  any  pretence  to  a  representative  character,  but 
is  already  strongly  and  distinctly  pledged."  And  the 
conclusion  is,  that  "  the  cause  of  disestablishment,  so 
far  from  being  the  forlorn  crusade  of  a  handful  of 
fanatics,  is  in  fact  a  cause  to  which  a  greater  number 
of  Radicals  of  all  kinds  may  be  expected  to  rally  than 
to  any  other  cause  whatever."  And  therefore  this 
cause  should  be  made  by  all  Liberals,  the  writer 
argues,  the  real  object,  and  other  things  should  be 
treated  as  secondary  and  contributory  to  it.  "  Let 
us  reform  our  electoral  machinery,"  says  he,  "  by  all 
means,  but  let  us  understand,  and  make  others  under- 


III.]  THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  321 

stand,  that  we  only  seek  this  because  we  seek  some- 
thing else :  the  disestablishment  of  the  Episcopal 
Church  in  England."  Such  is  the  programme  of  what 
calls  itself  "scientific  liberalism." 

By  far  the  most  formidable  force  in  the  array  of 
dangers  which  this  critic  has  mustered  to  threaten 
the  Church  of  England,  is  the  estrangement  of  the 
working  classes, — of  that  part  of  them,  too,  which 
has  no  attachment  to  Dissent,  but  which  is  simply 
zealous  about  social  and  political  questions.  This 
part  may  not  be  overwhelming  in  numbers,  but  it  is 
the  living  and  leading  part  of  the  whole  to  which  it 
belongs.  Its  sentiment  tends  to  become,  with  time, 
the  sentiment  of  the  whole.  If  its  sentiment  is  un- 
alterably hostile  to  the  Church  of  England,  if  the 
character  of  the  Church  is  such  that  this  must  needs 
be  so  and  remain  so,  then  the  question  of  disestablish- 
ment is,  I  think,  settled.  The  Church  of  England 
cannot,  in  the  long  run,  stand. 

The  ideal  of  the  working  classes  is  a  future, — a 
future  on  earth,  not  up  in  the  sky, — which  shall  pro- 
foundly change  and  ameliorate  things  for  them ;  an 
immense  social  progress,  nay,  a  social  transformation; 
in  short,  as  their  song  goes,  "a  good  time  coming." 
And  the  Church  is  supposed  to  be  an  appendage  to 
the  Barbarians,  as  I  have  somewhere,  in  joke,  called 
it ;  an  institution  devoted  above  all  to  the  landed 
gentry,  but  also  to  the  propertied  and  satisfied  classes 
generally;  favouring  immobility,  preaching  submis- 
sion, and  reserving  transformation  in  general  for  the 
other  side  of  the  grave. 

VOL.  VII.  Y 


322       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION,       [ill. 

Such  a  Church,  I  admit,  cannot  possibly  nowadays 
attach  the  working  classes,  or  be  viewed  with  any- 
thing but  disfavour  by  them.  But  certainly  the 
superstitious  worship  of  existing  social  facts,  a  de- 
voted obsequiousness  to  the  landed  and  propertied 
and  satisfied  classes,  does  not  inhere  in  the  Christian 
religion.  The  Church  does  not  get  it  from  the  Bible. 
Exception  is  taken  to  its  being  said  that  there  is  com- 
munism in  the  Bible,  because  we  see  that  communists 
are  fierce,  violent,  insurrectionary  people,  with  temper 
and  actions  abhorrent  to  the  spirit  of  the  Bible.  But 
if  we  say,  on  the  one  hand,  that  the  Bible  utterly 
condemns  all  violence,  revolt,  fierceness,  and  self- 
assertion,  then  we  may  safely  say,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  there  is  certainly  communism  in  the  Bible.  The 
truth  is,  the  Bible  enjoins  endless  self-sacrifice  all 
round;  and  to  any  one  who  has  grasped  this  idea, 
the  superstitious  worship  of  property,  the  reverent 
devotedness  to  the  propertied  and  satisfied  classes,  is 
impossible.  And  the  Christian  Church  has,  I  boldly 
say,  been  the  fruitful  parent  of  men  who,  having 
grasped  this  idea,  have  been  exempt  from  this  super- 
stition. Institutions  are  to  be  judged  by  their  great 
men ;  in  the  end,  they  take  their  line  from  their 
great  men.  The  Christian  Church,  and  the  line 
which  is  natural  to  it  and  which  will  one  day  prevail 
in  it,  is  to  be  judged  from  the  saints  and  the  tone  of 
the  saints.  Now  really,  if  there  have  been  any 
people  in  the  world  free  from  illusions  about  the 
divine  origin  and  divine  sanctions  of  social  facts  just 
as  they  stand, — open,  therefore,  to  the  popular  hopes 


III.]  THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  323 

of  a  profound  renovation  and  a  happier  future, — it 
has  been  those  inspired  idiots,  the  poets  and  the 
saints.  Nobody  nowadays  attends  much  to  what  the 
poets  say,  so  I  leave  them  on  one  side.  But  listen  to 
a  saint  on  the  origin  of  property ;  listen  to  Pascal. 
"  'This  dog  belongs  to  me,'  said  these  poor  children  ; 
'  that  place  in  the  sun  is  mine  ! '  Behold  the  begin- 
ning and  the  image  of  all  usurpation  upon  earth  ! " 
Listen  to  him  instructing  the  young  Duke  of  Roannez 
as  to  the  source  and  sacredness  of  his  rank  and  his 
estates.     First  as  to  his  estates  : — 

"Do  you  imagine,"  lie  says,  "that  it  is  by  some  way  of 
nature  that  your  property  has  passed  from  your  ancestors  to 
you  ?  Such  is  not  the  case.  This  order  is  but  founded  on  the 
simple  will  and  pleasure  of  legislators,  who  may  have  had  good 
reasons  for  what  they  did,  but  not  one  of  their  reasons  was 
taken  from  any  natural  right  of  yours  over  these  possessions. 
If  they  had  chosen  to  ordain  that  this  proj^erty,  after  having 
been  held  by  your  father  during  his  lifetime,  should  revert  to 
the  commonwealth  after  his  death,  you  would  have  had  no 
ground  for  complaint.  Thus  your  whole  title  to  your  property 
is  not  a  title  from  nature,  but  a  title  of  human  creation.  A 
different  turn  of  imagination  in  the  law -makers  would  have 
left  you  poor  ;  and  it  is  only  that  combination  of  the  chance 
which  produces  your  birth  with  the  turn  of  fancy  producing 
laws  advantageous  to  you,  which  makes  you  the  master  of  all 
these  possessions. " 

And  then,  the  property  having  been  dealt  with, 
comes  the  turn  of  the  rank  : — 

"  There  are  two  sorts  of  grandeurs  in  the  world  ;  grandeurs 
which  men  have  set  up,  and  natural  grandeurs.  The  gran- 
deurs which  men  have  set  up  depend  on  the  will  and  pleasure 
of  men.  Dignities  and  nobility  are  grandeurs  of  this  kind.  In 
one  country  they  honour  nobles,  in  another  commoners  ;  here 


324       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [ill. 

the  eldest  son,  there  the  youngest  son.     Why  ?  because  such 
has  been  men's  will  and  pleasure. " 

There,  certainly,  speaks  a  great  voice  of  religion 
without  any  superstitious  awe  of  rank  and  of  pro- 
perty !  The  treasures  of  Pascal's  scorn  are  bound- 
less, and  they  are  magnificent.  They  are  poured  out 
in  full  flood  on  the  superstitious  awe  in  question. 
The  only  doubt  may  be,  perhaps,  whether  they  are 
not  poured  out  on  it  too  cruelly,  too  overwhelmingly. 
But  in  what  secular  writer  shall  we  find  anything  to 
match  them  1 

Ay,  or  in  what  saint  or  doctor,  some  one  will  say, 
of  the  Church  of  England  1  If  there  is  a  stronghold, 
of  stolid  deference  to  the  illusions  of  the  aristocratic 
and  propertied  classes,  the  Church  of  England,  many 
people  will  maintain,  is  that  stronghold.  It  is  the  most 
formidable  complaint  against  the  Church,  the  com- 
plaint which  creates  its  most  serious  danger.  There 
is  nothing  like  having  the  very  words  of  the  com- 
plainants themselves  in  a  case  of  this  sort.  "  I  wish," 
says  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith,  "  I  wish  the  clergy  would 
consider  whether  something  of  the  decline  of  Chris- 
tianity may  not  be  due  to  the  fact  that  for  ages 
Christianity  has  been  accepted  by  the  clergy  of  the 
Established  Church  as  the  ally  of  political  and  social 
injustice."  "  The  Church  of  England,"  says  Mr. 
John  Morley,  "  is  the  ally  of  tyranny,  the  organ  of 
social  oppression,  the  champion  of  intellectual 
bondage."  There  are  the  leaders  ! — and  the  Beehive 
shall  give  us  the  opinion  of  the  rank  and  file.  "  The 
clergy  could  not  take  money  from  the  employing 


III.]  THE  CHUECH  OF  ENGLAND.  325 

classes  and  put  it  into  the  pockets  of  the  employed  ; 
but  they  might  have  insisted  on  such  a  humane  con- 
sideration and  Christian  regard  for  human  welfare, 
as  would  have  so  influenced  men's  dealings  in  regard 
to  each  other  as  to  prevent  our  present  misery  and 
suffering. " 

You  will  observe,  by  the  way,  and  it  is  a  touching 
thing  to  witness,  that  the  complaint  of  the  real  suf- 
ferers, as  they  think  themselves,  is  in  a  strain  com- 
paratively calm  and  mild ;  how  much  milder  than 
the  invective  of  their  literary  leaders !  Still,  the 
upshot  of  the  complaint  is  the  same  with  both.  The 
Church  shares  and  serves  the  prejudices  of  rank  and 
property,  instead  of  contending  with  them. 

Now,  I  say  once  more  that  every  Church  is  to  be 
judged  by  its  great  men.  Theirs  are  the  authorita- 
tive utterances.  They  survive.  They  lay  hold, 
sooner  or  later,  and  in  proportion  to  their  impres- 
siveness  and  truth,  on  the  minds  of  Churchmen  to 
whom  they  come  down.  They  strike  the  note  to 
be  finally  taken  in  the  Church.  Listen,  then,  to 
this  on  "the  seemingly  enormous  discrimination," 
as  the  speaker  calls  it,  "  among  men  "  : — 

"That  distinction  which  thou  standest  upon,  and  which 
seemeth  so  vast,  between  thy  poor  neighbour  and  thee,  what 
is  it  ?  whence  did  it  come  ?  whither  tends  it  ?  It  is  not  any- 
wise natural,  or  according  to  primitive  design.  Inequality 
and  private  interest  in  things  (together  with  sicknesses  and 
pains,  together  with  all  other  infelicities  and  inconveniences) 
were  the  by-blows  of  our  guilt ;  sin  introduced  these  degrees 
and  distances  ;  it  devised  the  names  of  rich  and  poor  ;  it  begot 
those  ingrossing  and  inclosures  of  things  ;  it  forged  those  two 


326       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [ill. 

small  pestilent  words,  meum  and  tuum,  which  have  engendered 
so  much  strife  among  men,  and  created  so  much  mischief  in  the 
world  ;  these  preternatural  distinctions  were,  I  say,  brooded  by 
our  fault,  and  are  in  great  part  fostered  and  maintained  thereby ; 
for  were  we  generally  so  good,  so  just,  so  charitable  as  we  should 
be,  they  could  hardly  subsist,  especially  in  that  measure  they 
do.  God,  indeed  (for  promoting  some  good  ends  and  for  pre- 
vention of  some  mischiefs  apt  to  spring  from  our  ill-nature  in 
this  our  lapsed  state,  particularly  to  prevent  the  strife  and  dis- 
order which  scrambling  would  cause  among  men,  presuming 
on  equal  right  and  parity  of  force),  doth  suffer  them  in  some 
manner  to  continue  ;  but  we  mistake  if  we  think  that  natural 
equality  and  community  are  in  effect  quite  taken  away  ;  or  that 
all  the  world  is  so  cantonised  among  a  few  that  the  rest  have 
no  share  therein. " 

Who  is  it  who  says  that  1  It  is  one  of  the  emi- 
nently representative  men  of  the  English  Church, 
its  best  and  soundest  moralist ;  a  man  sober-minded, 
weighty,  esteemed ; — it  is  Barrow.  And  it  is  Barrow 
in  the  full  blaze  of  the  Eestoration,  in  his  Hospital 
Sermon  of  1671. 

Well,  then,  a  fascinated  awe  of  class -privileges, 
station,  and  property,  a  belief  in  the  divine  appoint- 
ment, perfectness,  and  perpetuity  of  existing  social 
arrangements,  is  not  the  authentic  tradition  of  the 
Church  of  England.  It  is  important  to  insist  upon 
this,  important  for  the  Church  to  feel  and  avow  it, 
because  no  institution  with  these  prejudices  could 
possibly  carry  the  working  classes  with  it.  And  it 
is  necessary  for  the  Church,  if  it  is  to  live,  that  it 
should  carry  the  working  classes  with  it.  Suffer  me, 
after  quoting  to  you  Jeremy  Taylor  and  Butler  and 
Pascal  and  Barrow,  to  quote  to  you  a  much  less 
orthodox  personage :  M.   Eenan.      But   what   I  am 


in.]        THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.         327 

going  to  quote  from  him  is  profoundly  true.  He 
has  been  observing  that  Christianity,  at  its  outset, 
had  an  immense  attraction  for  the  popular  classes, 
as  he  calls  them ;  "  the  popular  classes  whom  the 
State  and  religion  neglected  equally."  And  he  pro- 
ceeds :  "  Here  is  the  great  lesson  of  this  history  for 
our  own  age ;  the  times  correspond  to  one  another ; 
the  future  will  belong  to  that  party  which  can  get 
hold  of  the  popular  classes  and  elevate  them." 
"But  in  our  days,"  M.  Eenan  adds,  "the  difficulty 
is  far  greater  than  it  ever  was."  And  this  is  true; 
the  difficulty  is  great,  very  great.  But  the  thing 
has  to  be  done,  and  the  Church  is  the  right  power 
to  do  it. 

Now,  the  Church  tends,  people  say,  at  present  to 
become  more  mixed  and  popular  than  it  used  to  be  in 
the  composition  of  its  clergy.  They  are  recruited  from 
a  wider  field.  Sometimes  one  hears  this  lamented, 
and  its  disadvantages  insisted  upon.  But,  in  view  of 
a  power  of  comprehending  popular  ideals  and  sym- 
pathising with  them,  it  has,  I  think,  its  advantage. 
No  one  can  overlook  or  deny  the  immense  labours 
and  sacrifices  of  the  clergy  for  the  improvement  of 
the  condition  of  the  popular,  the  working  classes ; — 
for  their  schools,  for  instance,  and  for  their  physical 
well-being  in  countless  ways.  But  this  is  not  enough 
without  a  positive  sympathy  Avith  popular  ideals. 
And  the  great  popular  ideal  is,  as  I  have  said,  an 
immense  renovation  and  transformation  of  things,  a 
far  better  and  happier  society  in  the  future  than 
ours  is  now.     Mixed  with  all  manner  of  alloy  and 


328       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [in. 

false  notions  this  ideal  often  is,  yet  in  itself  it  is 
precious,  it  is  true.  And  let  me  observe,  it  is  also 
the  ideal  of  our  religion.  It  is  the  business  of  our 
religion  to  make  us  believe  in  this  very  ideal ;  it  is 
the  business  of  the  clergy  to  profess  and  to  preach 
it.  In  this  view  it  is  really  well  to  consider,  how 
entirely  our  religious  teaching  and  preaching,  and 
our  creeds,  and  what  passes  with  us  for  "  the  gospel," 
turn  on  quite  other  matters  from  the  fundamental 
matter  of  the  primitive  gospel,  or  good  news,  of  our 
Saviour  himself.  This  gospel  was  the  ideal  of  popular 
hope  and  longing,  an  immense  renovation  and  trans- 
formation of  things :  the  kingdom  of  God.  "  Jesus 
came  into  Galilee  proclaiming  the  good  news  of  God 
and  saying :  The  time  is  fulfilled  and  the  kingdom 
of  God  is  at  hand ;  repent  and  believe  the  good  news." 
Jesus  went  about  the  cities  and  villages  "  proclaiming 
the  good  news  of  the  kingdom."  The  multitudes 
followed  him,  and  he  "took  them  and  talked  to 
them  about  the  kingdom  of  God."  He  told  his 
disciples  to  preach  this.  "  Go  thou,  and  spread  the 
news  of  the  kingdom  of  God."  "  Into  whatever  city 
ye  enter,  say  to  them  :  The  kingdom  of  God  has  come 
nigh  unto  you."  He  told  his  disciples  to  pray  for  it, 
— to  pray:  "Thy  kingdom  come!"  He  told  them 
to  seek  and  study  it  before  all  things.  "  Seek  first 
God's  righteousness  and  kingdom."  He  said  that 
the  news  of  it  should  be  published  throughout  the 
world.  "This  good  news  of  the  kingdom  shall  be 
proclaimed  in  the  whole  world,  for  a  witness  to  all 
nations."     And  it  was   a  kingdom   here   on  earth, 


in.]  THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  329 

not  in  some  other  world  unseen.  It  was  "God's 
will  done,  as  in  heaven,  so  on  earth." 

And  in  this  line  the  preaching  went  on  for  some 
time  after  our  Saviour's  death.  Philip,  in  Samaria, 
"  delivers  the  good  news  concerning  the  kingdom  of 
God."  Paul,  at  Ephesus,  "discusses  and  persuades 
concerning  the  kingdom  of  God."  At  Pome,  he 
"testifies  to  the  kingdom  of  God,"  "proclaims  the 
kins;dom  of  God."  He  tells  the  Corinthians  that 
Christ  sent  him  "  not  to  baptize  but  to  deliver  the 
good  news," — the  good  news  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 
True,  additions  soon  appear  to  the  original  gospel, 
which  explain  hoAv  preaching  came  to  diverge  from 
it.  The  additions  were  inevitable.  The  kingdom 
of  God  was  realisable  only  through  Jesus, — was  im- 
possible without  Jesus.  And  therefore  the  preaching 
concerning  Jesus  had  necessarily  to  be  added  to  the 
preaching  concerning  the  kingdom.  Accordingly, 
we  find  Philip  "  delivering  the  good  news  concerning 
the  kingdom  of  God,  and  the  name  of  Jesas  Christ" 
We  find  him  "  delivering  (to  the  eunuch)  the  good 
news  of  Jesus."  We  find  Paul  "proclaiming  Jesus, 
that  he  is  the  Son  of  God,"  "  proving  that  he  is  the  Christ" 
putting,  as  the  foremost  matter  of  the  "good  news," 
Christ's  death  and  resurrection. 

"The  kingdom"  was  to  be  won  through  faith  in 
Christ;  in  Christ  crucified  and  risen,  and  crucified 
and  risen,  I  freely  admit,  in  the  plain  material  sense 
of  those  words.  And,  moreover,  "  the  kingdom " 
was  conceived  by  the  apostles  as  the  triumphant 
return  of  Christ,  in  the  lifetime  of  the  very  genera- 


330       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [ill. 

tion  then  living,  to  judge  the  world  and  to  reign  in 
glory  with  his  saints.  The  disciples  conceived  "  the 
kingdom,"  therefore,  amiss ;  it  was  hardly  possible 
for  them  not  to  do  so.  But  we  can  readily  under- 
stand how  thus,  as  time  went  on,  Christian  preaching 
came  more  and  more  to  drop,  or  to  leave  in  the  back- 
ground, its  one  primitive  gospel,  the  good  news  of  the 
kingdom,  and  to  settle  on  other  points.  Yet  whoever 
reverts  to  it,  reverts,  I  say,  to  the  primitive  gospel ; 
which  is  the  good  news  of  an  immense  renovation 
and  transformation  of  this  world,  by  the  establish- 
ment of  what  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  calls  (in 
the  most  authentic  reading  of  the  passage)  "God's 
righteousness  and  kingdom."  This  was  the  ideal  of 
Jesus  : — the  establishment  on  earth  of  God's  kingdom, 
of  felicity,  not  by  the  violent  processes  of  our  Fifth 
Monarchy  men,  or  of  the  German  Anabaptists,  or  of 
the  French  Communists,  but  by  the  establishment  on 
earth  of  God's  righteousness. 

But  it  is  a  contracted  and  insufficient  conception 
of  the  gospel  which  takes  into  view  only  the  estab- 
lishment of  righteousness,  and  does  not  also  take  into 
view  the  establishment  of  the  kingdom.  And  the 
establishment  of  the  kingdom  does  imply  an  immense 
renovation  and  transformation  of  our  actual  state  of 
things; — that  is  certain.  This,  then,  which  is  the 
ideal  of  the  popular  classes,  of  the  multitude  every- 
where, is  a  legitimate  ideal.  And  a  Church  of 
England,  devoted  to  the  service  and  ideals  of  any 
limited  class, — however  distinguished,  wealthy,  or 
powerful, — which  is  perfectly  satisfied  with  things 


III.]  THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  331 

as  they  are,  is  not  only  out  of  sympathy  with  the 
ideal  of  the  popular  classes ;  it  is  also  out  of  sym- 
pathy with  the  gospel,  of  which  the  ideal  does,  in 
the  main,  coincide  with  theirs.  True,  the  most  clear 
voice  one  could  even  desire  in  favour  of  such  an  ideal 
is  found  to  come,  as  we  -have  seen,  from  the  Church 
of  England,  from  a  representative  man  among  the 
clergy  of  that  Church.  But  it  is  important  that 
the  clergy,  as  a  body,  should  sympathise  heartily 
with  that  ideal.  And  this  they  can  best  bring  them- 
selves to  do,  any  of  them  who  may  require  such 
bringing,  by  accustoming  themselves  to  see  that  the 
ideal  is  the  true  original  ideal  of  their  religion  and 
of  its  Founder. 

I  have  dwelt  a  long  while  upon  this  head,  because 
of  its  extreme  importance.  If  the  Church  of  England 
is  right  here,  it  has,  I  am  persuaded,  nothing  to 
fear  either  from  Eome,  or  from  the  Protestant  Dis- 
senters, or  from  the  secularists.  It  cannot,  I  think, 
stand  secure  unless  it  has  the  sympathy  of  the 
popular  classes.  And  it  cannot  have  the  sympathy 
of  the  popular  classes  unless  it  is  right  on  this  head. 
But,  if  it  is  right  on  this  head,  it  may,  I  feel  con- 
vinced, nourish  and  be  strong  with  their  sympathy, 
and  with  that  of  the  nation  in  general.  For  it  has 
natural  allies  in  what  Burke,  that  gifted  Irishman,  so 
finely  calls  "  the  ancient  and  inbred  integrity,  piety, 
good  nature,  and  good  humour  of  the  English  people." 
It  has  an  ally  in  the  English  people's  piety.  If  the 
matter  were  not  so  serious,  one  could  hardly  help 
smiling  at   the  chagrin  and  manifest  perplexity  of 


332       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [in. 

such  of  one's  friends  as  happen  to  be  philosophical 
radicals  and  secularists,  at  having  to  reckon  with 
religion  again  when  they  thought  its  day  was  quite 
gone  by,  and  that  they  need  not  study  it  any  more 
or  take  account  of  it  any  more,  but  it  was  passing  out, 
and  a  kind  of  new  gospel,  half  Bentham,  half  Cobden, 
in  which  they  were  themselves  particularly  strong, 
was  coming  in.  And  perhaps  there  is  no  one  who 
more  deserves  to  be  compassionated  than  an  elderly  or 
middle-aged  man  of  this  kind,  such  as  several  of  their 
Parliamentary  spokesmen  and  representatives  are. 
For  perhaps  the  younger  men  of  the  party  may  take 
heart  of  grace,  and  acquaint  themselves  a  little  with 
religion,  now  that  they  see  its  day  is  by  no  means 
over.  But,  for  the  older  ones,  their  mental  habits 
are  formed,  and  it  is  almost  too  late  for  them  to 
begin  such  new  studies.  However,  a  wave  of  reli- 
gious reaction  is  evidently  passing  over  Europe ;  due 
very  much  to  our  revolutionary  and  philosophical 
friends  having  insisted  upon  it  that  religion  was  gone 
by  and  unnecessary,  when  it  was  neither  the  one  nor 
the  other.  And  what  one  sees  in  France,  and  else- 
where, really  makes  some  words  of  Butler  (if  you 
are  not  yet  tired  of  Butler)  read  like  a  prophecy  : — 

"Indeed,"  lie  sa\s,  "amongst  creatures  naturally  formed 
for  religion,  yet  so  much  under  the  power  of  imagination,  so 
apt  to  deceive  themselves,  as  men  are,  superstition  is  an  evil 
which  can  never  be  out  of  sight.  But  even  against  this,  true 
religion  is  a  great  security ;  and  the  only  one.  True  religion 
takes  up  that  place  in  the  mind  which  superstition  would 
usurp,  and  so  leaves  little  room  for  it :  and  likewise  lays  us 
under  the  strongest  obligations  to  oppose  it.     On  the  contrary, 


in.]        THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.         333 

the  danger  of  superstition  cannot  but  be  increased  by  the  pre- 
valence of  irreligion  ;  and  by  its  general  prevalence  the  evil 
will  be  unavoidable.  For  the  common  people,  "wanting  a  reli- 
gion, will  of  course  take  up  with  almost  any  superstition  which 
is  thrown  in  their  way  ;  and  in  process  of  time,  amidst  the 
infinite  vicissitudes  of  the  political  world,  the  leaders  of  parties 
will  certainly  be  able  to  serve  themselves  of  that  superstition, 
whatever  it  be,  which  is  getting  ground ;  and  will  not  fail  to 
carry  it  on  to  the  utmost  lengths  their  occasions  require. " 

And  does  not  one  see  at  the  present  day,  in  the  very 
places  where  irreligion  had  prevailed  most,  supersti- 
tion laying  hold  of  those  who  seemed  the  last  people 
likely  to  be  laid  hold  of  by  it,  and  politicians  making 
their  game  out  of  this  state  of  things  ?  Yet  that 
there  should  spring  up  in  Paris,  for  instance,  a 
Catholic  Working  Men's  Union,  and  that  it  should 
prosper,  will  surprise  no  one  who  considers  how 
strong  is  the  need  in  human  nature  for  a  moral  rule 
and  bridle,  such  as  religion,  even  a  superstitious  one, 
affords ;  and  how  entirely  the  Paris  workman  was 
without  anything  of  the  kind.  La  Rochefoucauld, 
who  is  here  a  witness  whom  no  one  will  challenge, 
says  most  truly  :  "  It  is  harder  to  keep  oneself  from 
being  governed  than  to  govern  others."  Obedience, 
strange  as  it  may  sound,  is  a  real  need  of  human 
nature ; — above  all,  moral  and  religious  obedience. 
And  it  is  less  hard  to  a  Paris  workman  to  swallow 
beliefs  which  one  would  have  thought  impossible  for 
him,  than  to  go  on  in  life  and  conduct  in  unchartered 
freedom,  like  a  wave  of  the  sea,  driven  with  the  wind 
and  tossed.  Undoubtedly,  then,  there  are  in  the 
popular  classes  of  every  country  forces  of  piety  and 


334       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [in. 

religion  capable  of  being  brought  into  an  alliance  with 
the  Church,  the  national  society  for  the  promotion  of 
goodness  in  that  country.  And  of  no  people  may 
this  be  more  certainly  said  than  of  ours. 

Still,  there  is  in  this  English  people  an  integrity, 
as  Burke  calls  it, — a  native  fund  of  downrightness, 
plain  honesty,  integrity, — which  makes  our  popular 
classes  very  unapt  to  cheat  themselves  in  religion, 
and  to  swallow  things  down  wholesale  out  of  senti- 
ment, or  even  out  of  weariness  of  moral  disorder  and 
from  need  of  a  moral  rule.  And  therefore  I  said  that 
Rome  was  not  a  real  danger  for  us,  and  that  in  the 
integrity  of  the  English  people  the  Church  of 
England  had  a  natural  ally.  I  say  this  in  view  of 
the  popular  classes.  Higher  up,  with  individuals, 
and  even  with  small  classes,  sentiment  and  fantasy, 
and  morbid  restlessness  and  weariness,  may  come  in. 
But  with  the  popular  classes  and  with  the  English 
people  as  a  whole,  it  is  in  favour  of  the  Church  that 
it  is  what  Butler  called  it,  and  what  it  is  sometimes 
reproached  for  being :  a  reasonable  Establishment. 
And  it  is  a  reasonable  Establishment,  and  in  the 
good  sense.  I  know  of  no  other  Establishment  so 
reasonable.  Churches  are  characterised,  I  have  said, 
by  their  great  men.  Show  me  any  other  great 
Church  of  which  a  chief  doctor  and  luminary  has  a 
sentence  like  this  sentence,  splendide  verax,  of  Butler's : 
"Things  are  what  they  are,  and  the  consequences  of 
them  will  be  what  they  will  be ;  why,  then,  should 
we  desire  to  be  deceived  1 "  To  take  in  and  to  digest 
such  a  sentence  as  that,  is  an  education  in  moral  and 


in.]        THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.         335 

intellectual  veracity.  And  after  all,  intensely  Butler- 
ian  as  the  sentence  is,  yet  Butler  came  to  it  because 
he  is  English ;  because  at  the  bottom  of  his  nature 
lay  such  a  fund  of  integrity. 

Show  me  another  great  Church,  again,  in  which  a 
theologian,  arguing  that  a  religious  doctrine  of  the 
truth  of  which  a  man  is  not  sure, — the  doctrine,  let 
us  suppose,  of  a  future  state  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments,— may  yet  properly  be  made  to  sway  his  con- 
duct and  practice  (a  recommendation  which  seems  to 
me,  I  must  confess,  impossible  to  be  carried  into 
effect) ;  but  show  me  in  another  Church  a  theologian 
arguing  thus,  yet  careful  at  the  same  time  to  warn 
us,  that  we  have  no  business  to  tamper  with  our 
sense  of  evidence,  by  believing  the  doctrine  any  the 
more  on  the  ground  of  its  practical  importance  to  us. 
For  this  is  what  Butler  says  : — "To  be  influenced," 
he  says,  "  by  this  consideration  in  our  judgment,  to 
believe  or  disbelieve  upon  it,  is  indeed  as  much  pre- 
judice as  anything  whatever."  The  force  of  integrity, 
I  say,  can  no  farther  go. 

And,  distracted  as  is  the  state  of  religious  opinion 
amongst  us  at  this  moment,  in  no  other  great  Church 
is  there,  I  believe,  so  much  sincere  desire  as  there  is 
in  the  Church  of  England, — in  clergy  as  well  as  in 
laity, — to  get  at  the  real  truth.  In  no  other  great 
Church  is  there  so  little  false  pretence  of  assured 
knowledge  and  certainty  on  points  where  there  can 
be  none ;  so  much  disposition  to  see  and  to  admit 
with  Butler,  in  regard  to  such  points  and  to  the  root 
of  the  whole  matter  in  religion,  that  "  mankind  are 


336       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [in. 

for  placing  the  stress  of  their  religion  anywhere 
rather  than  upon  virtue,"  and  that  mankind  are 
wrong  in  so  doing.  To  this  absence  of  charlatanism, 
to  this  largeness  of  view,  to  this  pressing  to  the 
genuine  root  of  the  matter,  all  the  constituents 
assigned  to  the  English  people's  nature  by  Burke, — 
our  people's  piety,  their  integrity,  their  good  nature, 
their  good  humour,  but  above  all,  their  integrity, — 
contribute  to  incline  them.  That  the  Church  should 
show  a  like  inclination,  is  in  its  favour  as  a  National 
Church. 

Equally  are  these  constituents  of  the  English 
character,  and  the  way  of  thinking  which  naturally 
springs  from  them,  in  favour  of  the  Church  as  regards 
the  attacks  of  the  political  Dissenters.  Plain  direct- 
ness of  thinking,  a  largeness  and  good-naturedness  of 
mind,  are  not  favourable  judges,  I  think,  for  the 
Dissenters  at  the  present  moment, — for  their  griev- 
ances and  for  their  operations.  A  sense  of  piety  and 
religion  in  the  nation  is  to  be  supposed  to  start  with. 
And  I  suppose  it  to  be  clear  that  the  contention  no 
longer  is,  even  on  the  part  of  the  Dissenters  them- 
selves, that  a  certain  Church-order  is  alone  scriptural 
and  is  therefore  necessary,  and  that  it  is  that  of  the 
Dissenters,  not  of  the  Church  ;  or  that  the  Gospel 
consists  in  one  or  two  famous  propositions  of  specula- 
tive doctrine,  and  that  the  Dissenters  make  it  so  to 
consist,  while  the  Church  does  not.  At  any  rate, 
the  nation  in  general  will  no  longer  regard  this  con- 
tention as  serious,  even  if  some  Dissenters  do.  The 
serious  contention  is,  that  there  ought  to  be  perfect 


III.]  THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  337 

religious  equality,  as  it  is  called ;  and  that  the  State 
ought  not  to  adopt,  and  by  adopting  to  favour  and 
elevate  above  the  rest,  one  form  of  religion  out  of 
the  many  forms  that  are  current. 

But  surely,  the  moment  we  consider  religion  and 
Christianity  in  a  large  way  as  goodness,  and  a  Church 
as  a  society  for  the  promotion  of  goodness,  all  that  is 
said  about  having  such  a  society  before  men's  eyes  as 
a  city  set  upon  a  hill,  all  that  is  said  about  making 
the  Gospel  more  and  more  a  witness  to  mankind, 
applies  in  favour  of  the  State  adopting  some  form 
of  religion  or  other, — that  which  seems  best  suited 
to  the  majority, — even  though  it  may  not  be  perfect ; 
and  putting  that  forward  as  the  national  form  of 
religion.  "A  reasonable  establishment  has"  surely, 
as  Butler  says,  "  a  tendency  to  keep  up  a  sense  of 
real  religion  and  real  Christianity  in  a  nation."  That 
seems  to  me  to  be  no  more  than  the  plain  language 
of  common  sense.  And  I  think  what  follows  is 
true  also : — "  And  it  is  moreover  necessary  for  the 
encouragement  of  learning,  some  parts  of  which  the 
Scripture -revelation  absolutely  requires  should  be 
cultivated." 

But  what  seems  to  me  quite  certain  is,  that,  if 
goodness  is  the  end,  and  "all  good  men  are,"  as 
Butler  says,  "  equally  concerned  in  promoting  that 
end,"  then,  as  he  goes  on  to  conclude,  "to  do  it  more 
effectually  they  ought  to  unite  in  promoting  it ;  which 
yet  is  scarce  practicable  upon  any  new  models,  and 
quite  impossible  upon  such  as  every  one  would  think 
unexceptionable."    And  as  for  such,  he  says,  as  "  think 

vol.  vi r.  z 


338       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUECH  AND  KELIGION.       [ill. 

ours  liable  to  objection,  it  is  possible  they  themselves 
may  be  mistaken,  and  whether  they  are  or  no,  the 
very  nature  of  society  requires  some  compliance 
with  others.  Upon  the  whole,  therefore,  these  per- 
sons would  do  well  to  consider  how  far  they  can 
with  reason  satisfy  themselves  in  neglecting  what  is 
certainly  right  on  account  of  what  is  doubtful  whether 
it  be  wrong ;  and  when  the  right  is  of  so  much  greater 
consequence  one  way  than  the  supposed  wrong  can 
be  the  other."  Here  Butler  seems  to  me  to  be  on 
impregnable  ground,  and  it  is  the  ground  which  the 
largest  and  surest  spirits  amongst  us  have  always 
pitched  upon.  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  the  most  moderate 
of  men  and  the  most  disposed  to  comprehension,  said : 
"Those  of  the  separation  were  good  men,  but  they 
had  narrow  souls,  who  would  break  the  peace  of 
the  Church  about  such  inconsiderable  matters  as  the 
points  in  difference  were."  Henry  More,  that  beauti- 
ful spirit,  is  exactly  to  the  same  effect.  "A  little 
religion  may  make  a  man  schismatical,  but  a  great 
deal  will  surely  make  a  man  decline  division  where 
things  are  tolerable,  which  is  the  case  of  our  English 
Church."  And  the  more  a  large  way  of  thinking 
comes  to  spread  in  this  nation,  which  by  its  good 
nature  and  good  humour  has  a  natural  turn  for  it, 
the  more  will  this  view  come  to  prevail.  It  will 
be  acknowledged  that  the  Church  is  a  society  for 
the  promotion  of  goodness ;  that  such  a  society  is  the 
stronger  for  being  national,  and  ought  to  be  national ; 
that  to  make  its  operations,  therefore,  more  effectual, 
all  good  men  ought  to  unite  in  it,  and  that  the  objec- 


in.]        THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.         339 

tions  of  the  Protestant  Dissenters  to  uniting  in  it  are 
trivial. 

At  least,  their  religious  objections  to  uniting  in  it 
are  trivial.  Their  objections  from  the  annoyance  and 
mortification  at  having,  after  they  have  once  separated 
and  set  up  forms  of  their  own,  to  give  in  and  to  accept 
the  established  form,  and  their  allegations  of  their 
natural  jealousy  at  having  to  see,  if  they  do  not  accept 
it,  the  clergy  preferred  before  them  by  being  invested 
with  the  status  of  national  ministers  of  religion — these 
objections  are  much  more  worthy  of  note.  But,  in 
the  first  place,  whatever  preference  is  given,  is  given 
for  the  sake  of  the  whole  community,  not  of  those 
preferred.  And  many  preferences,  for  its  own  sake 
and  for  what  it  judges  to  be  the  public  good,  the 
whole  community  may  and  must  establish.  But  that 
which,  as  men's  minds  grow  larger,  will  above  all  pre- 
vent the  objections  and  complaints  of  the  Dissenters 
from  winning  sympathy  and  from  attaining  effect,  is 
that,  in  the  second  place,  it  will  be  more  and  more 
distinctly  perceived  that  their  objections  and  com- 
plaints are,  to  speak  truly,  irreligious  objections  and 
complaints,  and  yet  urged  in  the  sphere  of  religion. 

To  philosophical  Radicals  in  or  out  of  Parlia- 
ment, who  think  that  religion  is  all  a  chimsera,  and 
that  in  a  matter  so  little  important  the  fancies  of  the 
Dissenters,  whose  political  aid  is  valuable,  may  well 
be  studied  and  followed,  this  will  seem  nothing.  But 
the  more  the  sense  of  religion  grows,  and  of  religion 
in  a  large  way, — the  sense  of  the  beauty  and  rest  of 
religion,  the  sense  that  its  charm  lies  in  its  grace  and 


340       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUECH  AND  RELIGION.       [m. 

peace, — the  more  will  the  present  attitude,  objections, 
and  complaints  of  the  Dissenters  indispose  men's 
minds  to  them.  They  will,  I  firmly  believe,  lose 
ground ;  they  will  not  keep  hold  of  the  new  genera- 
tions. In  most  of  the  mature  Dissenters  the  spirit  of 
scruple,  objection-taking,  and  division,  is,  I  fear,  so 
ingrained,  that  in  any  proffered  terms  of  union  they 
are  more  likely  to  seize  occasion  for  fresh  cavil  than 
occasion  for  peace.  But  the  new  generations  will  be 
otherwise  minded.  As  to  the  Church's  want  of  grace 
and  peace  in  disputing  the  ground  with  Dissent,  the 
justice  of  what  Barrow  says  will  be  more  and  more 
felt : — "  He  that  being  assaulted  is  constrained  to 
stand  on  his  defence,  may  not  be  said  to  be  in  peace ; 
yet  his  not  being  so  (involuntarily)  is  not  to  be 
imputed  to  him."  But  the  Dissenters  have  not  this, 
the  Church's  excuse,  for  being  men  of  war  in  a  sphere 
of  grace  and  peace.  And  they  turn  themselves  into 
men  of  war  more  and  more. 

Look  at  one  of  the  ablest  of  them,  who  is  much 
before  the  public,  and  whose  abilities  I  unfeignedly 
admire  :  Mr.  Dale.  Mr.  Dale  is  really  a  pugilist,  a 
brilliant  pugilist.  He  has  his  arena  down  at  Birming- 
ham, where  he  does  his  practice  with  Mr.  Chamberlain, 
and  Mr.  Jesse  Collings,  and  the  rest  of  his  band ;  and 
then  from  time  to  time  he  comes  up  to  the  metropolis, 
to  London,  and  gives  a  public  exhibition  here  of  his 
skill.  And  a  very  powerful  performance  it  often  is. 
And  the  Times  observes,  that  the  chief  Dissenting 
ministers  are  becoming  quite  the  intellectual  equals 
of  the  ablest  of  the  clergy.     Very  likely ;  this  sort 


ill.]  THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  341 

of  practice  is  just  the  right  thing  for  bracing  a  man's 
intellectual  muscles.  I  have  no  fears  concerning  Mr. 
Dale's  intellectual  muscles ;  what  I  am  a  little  uneasy 
about  is  his  religious  temper.  The  essence  of  religion 
is  grace  and  peace.  And  though,  no  doubt,  Mr.  Dale 
cultivates  grace  and  peace  at  other  times,  when  he  is 
not  busy  with  his  anti-Church  practice,  yet  his  culti- 
vation of  grace  and  peace  can  be  none  the  better,  and 
must  naturally  be  something  the  worse,  for  the  time 
and  energy  given  to  his  pugilistic  interludes.  And 
the  more  that  mankind,  instead  of  placing  their  reli- 
gion in  all  manner  of  things  where  it  is  not,  come  to 
place  it  in  sheer  goodness,  and  in  grace  and  peace, — 
and  this  is  the  tendency,  I  think,  with  the  English 
people, — the  less  favourable  will  public  opinion  be  to 
the  proceedings  of  the  political  Dissenters,  and  the 
less  has  the  Church  to  fear  from  their  pugnacious 
self-assertion. 

Indeed,  to  eschew  self-assertion,  to  be, — instead  of 
always  thinking  about  one's  freedom,  and  one's  rights, 
and  one's  equality, — to  be,  as  Butler  says,  "  as  much 
afraid  of  subjection  to  mere  arbitrary  will  and  plea- 
sure in  ourselves  as  to  the  arbitrary  will  of  others," 
is  the  very  temper  of  religion.  What  the  clergy  have 
to  desire, — and  the  clergy  of  London  may  well  bear 
to  hear  this,  who  have,  as  a  body,  been  so  honourably 
distinguished  for  their  moderation  and  their  intelli- 
gence,—  what  the  clergy  have  to  aim  at,  is  the 
character  of  simple  instruments  for  the  public  good. 
What  they  have  to  shun,  is  their  action  having  at  all 
the  appearance  of  mere  arbitrary  will  and  pleasure 


342       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [in. 

of  the  individual.  One  can  hardly  speak  about  the 
Church  at  this  moment  without  touching  on  the 
Burials  Bill.  Give  me  leave  to  say,  that  the  danger- 
ous thing  to  the  Church,  as  regards  this  vexed  ques- 
tion of  burials,  has  been  the  opening  afforded,  in  the 
exclusion  of  unbaptized  persons,  to  the  exercise  of 
what  might  always  seem,  and  often  was,  the  exercise 
of  mere  arbitrary  will  and  pleasure  in  the  individual 
clergyman.  This,  it  seems  to  me,  ought  certainly  to 
be  abandoned ;  and  here,  surely,  is  an  occasion  for 
remembering  St.  Paul's  dictum,  that  "Christ  sent 
him  not  to  baptize,  but  to  preach  the  good  news." 
If  this  exclusion  were  wholly  abandoned,  if  the  option 
of  silent  funerals,  and  of  funerals  with  a  shortened 
service,  were  also  given,  I  think  as  much  would  have 
been  done  as  it  is  for  the  public  advantage  (I  put  the 
advantage  of  the  clergy  out  of  question  altogether, — 
they  have  none  but  that  of  the  community),  in  the 
special  circumstances  of  this  country,  to  do.  I  do 
not  believe  it  would  be  necessary  to  do  more,  in  order 
to  remove  all  real  sense  of  grievance,  and  to  end,  for 
sensible  people,  the  need  for  further  occupying  them- 
selves with  this  whole  barren  and  retarding  question 
of  Church  and  Dissent. 

And  I,  for  my  part,  now  leave  this  question,  I 
hope,  for  ever.  I  became  engaged  in  it  against  my 
will,  from  being  led  by  particular  circumstances  to 
remark  the  deteriorating  effect  of  the  temper  and 
strifes  of  Dissent  upon  good  men,  the  lamentable 
waste  of  power  and  usefulness  which  was  thereby 
caused ;    and  from  being   convinced  that   the  right 


in.]  THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND.  343 

settlement  was  to  be  reached  in  one  way  only ;  not 
by  disestablishment,  but  by  comprehension  and  union. 
However,  as  one  grows  old,  one  feels  that  it  is  not 
one's  business  to  go  on  for  ever  expostulating  with 
other  people  upon  their  waste  of  life,  but  to  make 
progress  in  grace  and  peace  oneself.  And  this  is  the 
real  business  of  the  Church,  too  :  to  make  progress  in 
grace  and  peace.  Force  the  Church  of  England  has 
certainly  some;  perhaps  a  good  deal.  But  its  true 
strength  is  in  relying,  not  on  its  powers  of  force,  but 
on  its  powers  of  attractiveness.  And  by  opening 
itself  to  the  glow  of  the  old  and  true  ideal  of  the 
Christian  Gospel,  by  fidelity  to  reason,  by  placing  the 
stress  of  its  religion  on  goodness,  by  cultivating 
grace  and  peace,  it  will  inspire  attachment,  to  which 
the  attachment  which  it  inspires  now,  deep  though 
that  is,  will  be  as  nothing ;  it  will  last,  be  sure,  as 
long  as  this  nation. 


IV. 

A  LAST  WOPJ)  ON  THE  BUEIALS  BILL. 

In  my  address  at  Sion  College  I  touched  for  a  moment 
on  the  now  much-discussed  question  of  the  Burials 
Bill.  I  observed,  that  whatever  resembled  an 
arbitrary  assertion  of  his  own  private  will  and 
pleasure  should  be  shunned  by  a  clergyman;  that 
the  exercise  of  his  right  of  refusing  burial  to  un- 
baptized  persons  often  resembled,  and  not  unfre- 
quently  was,  such  an  assertion ;  and  that  it  would 
be  for  the  advantage  of  the  Church  to  abandon  this 
right.  I  added  that  if  this  were  done,  and  if  the 
option  of  a  silent  service,  or  of  a  shortened  service, 
in  place  of  the  present  Burial  Service,  were  also 
given,  as  much  would  have  been  conceded  to  the 
Dissenters,  in  the  matter  of  burials,  as  justice  re- 
quires, as  much  as  it  is  for  the  public  interest  to 
concede,  and  as  much  as  it  will,  finally,  I  think,  be 
found  necessary  to  concede. 

But  much  more  than  this  is  claimed  for  the  Dis- 
senters. Mr.  Osborne  Morgan's  Bill  la}^s  down,  that 
"it  is  just  and  right  to  permit  the  performance  in 


iv.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BURIALS  BILL.  345 

parish  churchyards  of  other  burials  than  those  of  the 
Church  of  England,  and  by  other  persons  than  the 
ministers  of  that  Church."  And  the  Times  says  in 
recommendation  of  Mr.  Osborne  Morgan's  Bill : — 

"A  just  legislature  has  to  put  the  business  on  the  basis  of 
justice  and  truth.  It  will  consider  what  a  Dissenter  or  his 
friends  desire,  and  what,  being  in  accordance  with  his  or  their 
wishes,  will  be  no  injustice  or  untruth.  It  does  really  seem 
late  in  the  day  to  have  to  prove  that  the  imposition  of  a  service 
at  variance  with  the  whole  course  of  a  man's  life,  opinions,  and 
practice,  is  an  injustice  and  an  untruth.  An  Englishman  has  a 
right  to  worship  in  the  style  he  thinks  truest  and  best,  just  as 
he  has  a  right  to  dress  as  he  likes,  to  select  his  own  acquaint- 
ances, or  to  choose  his  own  pursuits.  Let  the  Dissenting  min- 
ister then,"  concludes  the  Times,  "enter  the  churchyard,  and 
have  his  own  say  over  his  own  spiritual  son  or  daughter  ;  and 
let  the  incumbent  cease  to  intrench  himself  in  the  vain  illusion 
of  an  inviolable  churchyard  in  a  parish  which  has  long  ceased 
to  be  his  exclusive  domain." 

Lord  Selborne,  too,  in  the  debate  on  Lord  Gran- 
ville's resolution  upon  the  subject  of  burials,  treated 
it  as  a  matter  quite  clear  and  self-evident,  that  to 
deny  this  right  to  Dissenters  was  a  violation  of  the 
established  English  principle  of  religious  liberty  : — 

"Is  there  any  conceivable  logical  answer,"  he  asked,  "to 
the  observation,  that  in  these  cases  you  deny  after  death  that 
religious  liberty  which  in  every  other  respect  is  given  to  the 
deceased  during  the  whole  of  their  lives  ?  You  deny  this 
liberty  in  the  present  state  of  things  in  two  ways  :  by  refusing 
to  them  the  liberty  of  being  religious  in  their  own  way,  and 
by  imposing  upon  them  the  necessity  of  being  religious  in  your 
way."  "The  feelings  of  the  great  majority  of  the  laity,"  Lord 
Selborne  adds,  "when  it  is  brought  home  to  them  that  there 
is  this  violation  of  the  established  principle  of  religious  liberty 
in  dealing  with  interments,  will  go  more  and  more  with  those 
who  complain  of  this  grievance." 


346       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  EELIGION.       [iv. 

A  number  of  clergymen,  many  of  them  bearing 
names  well  known  and  respected,  have  proposed,  as 
"a   reasonable   concession  to  the   feelings  of   Non- 
conformists," to  "grant  permission  to  a  recognised 
minister  or  representative  of  any  religious  body  to 
perform  in  the  churchyard  a  funeral  service  consist- 
ing  of    passages   of    Holy   Scripture,   prayers,    and 
hymns."     But  absolute  liberty  is  the  right  claimed, 
and  these  limitations  are  evidently  inconsistent  with 
it.     "We  are  afraid,"  says  the  Times  of  the  clergy- 
men's proposal,   "that  even  with  the   most  liberal 
interpretation,  this  restriction  leaves  out  of  account 
some  communities  for  whose  rights  the  supporters 
of  the  Bill  would  contend  as  strenuously  as  for  those 
of  others.     But  it  is  a  misapprehension,  it  is  to  be  appre- 
hended, of  the  essential  nature  of  a  Nonconformist,   to 
suppose  that  he  would  ever  pledge  himself  to  conform  to 
anything.     The  essence  of  his  demand  is  to  claim  free 
access  to  sacred  places,  which  the  necessity  of  nature 
compels  him  to  use,  with  such  observances  as  the 
principles  of  his  communion  may  prescribe."     Yes, 
"necessity  of   nature."     For,  it   is   argued,    "while 
every  other  public  incident  of  a  man's  life  must  be 
optional,  he  must  be  buried."     And  therefore,  con- 
tends the  Times  to  exactly  the  same  effect  as  Lord 
Selborne,  "  let  the  natural  necessity  of  burial  be  once 
admitted,   and  the  necessity  of   according  religious 
freedom  in  the  satisfaction  of  it  must  inevitably  be 
allowed." 

Finally,    it   is   said    that   in   all    other   Christian 
countries,  except  Spain,  the  right  of  burying  their 


iv.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BURIALS  BILL.  347 

dead  in  the  parish  churchyard,  with  their  own 
services  and  their  own  ministers,  is  conceded  to 
Dissenters.  And  here  again,  then,  is  a  reason  why 
in  England  too  the  clergyman  should,  as  the  Times 
says,  "cease  to  intrench  himself  in  the  vain  illusion 
of  an  inviolable  churchyard  in  a  parish  which  has 
long  ceased  to  be  his  exclusive  domain;"  should 
"let  the  Dissenting  minister  enter  the  ground,  and 
have  his  own  say  over  his  own  spiritual  son  or 
daughter." 

I  have  been  asked,  how  the  concession  which  I 
spoke  of  at  Sion  College  can  be  thought  sufficient, 
when  it  is  so  much  less  than  what  the  Dissenters 
themselves  and  their  friends  demand,  than  what 
some  of  the  best  of  the  clergy  offer  to  concede,  than 
what  natural  justice  and  the  recognised  English  prin- 
ciple of  religious  liberty  require,  and  than  what  is 
almost  universally  conceded  in  the  rest  of  Christen- 
dom 1  And  I  am  asked  this  by  those  who  approach 
the  question,  just  as  I  approach  it  myself,  in  a  spirit 
perfectly  disinterested.  They,  like  myself,  have  no 
political  object  to  serve  by  answering  it  in  a  way 
favourable  to  the  Dissenters,  they  do  not  care  whether 
or  not  it  is  the  liberal-looking,  popular,  taking  thing 
so  to  answer  it.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  they  have 
no  need  to  bid  for  the  support  of  the  clergy ;  they 
are,  moreover,  without  the  least  touch  of  ecclesias- 
tical bias.  They  simply  want  to  get  the  question 
answered  in  a  way  to  satisfy  their  own  minds  and 
consciences,  want  to  find  out  what  is  really  the  right 
and  reasonable  course  to  pursue.     And  for  their  satis- 


348       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUKCH  AND  RELIGION.       [iv. 

faction,  and  also  for  my  own,  I  return  for  a  moment 
to  this  matter  of  burials,  before  finally  leaving  the 
whole  question  of  Church  and  Dissent ;  that  I  may 
not  seem  to  be  leaving  it  with  a  curt  and  inconsider- 
ate judgment  on  a  matter  where  the  feelings  of  the 
Dissenters  are  strongly  interested. 

II. 

What  is  the  intention  of  all  forms  of  public  cere- 
monial and  ministration1?  It  is,  that  what  is  done 
and  said  in  a  public  place,  and  bears  with  it  a  public 
character,  should  be  done  and  said  worthily.  The 
public  is  responsible  for  it.  The  public  gets  credit 
and  advantage  from  it  if  it  is  done  worthily,  is  com- 
promised and  harmed  by  it  if  it  is  done  unworthily. 
The  mode,  therefore,  of  performing  public  functions 
in  places  invested  with  a  public  character  is  not  left 
to  the  will  and  pleasure  of  chance  individuals.  It  is 
expressly  designed  to  rise  above  the  level  which  would 
be  thence  given.  If  there  is  a  sort  of  ignobleness  and 
vulgarity  (was  tins  alle  blindigt,  das  Gemeine)  which 
comes  out  in  the  crude  performance  of  the  mass  of 
mankind  left  to  themselves,  public  forms,  in  a  higher 
strain  and  of  recognised  worth,  are  designed  to  take 
the  place  of  such  crude  performance.  They  are  a 
kind  of  schooling,  which  may  educate  gradually  such 
performance  into  something  better,  and  meanwhile 
may  prevent  it  from  standing  forth,  to  its  own  dis- 
credit and  to  that  of  all  of  us,  as  public  and  repre- 
sentative.    This,  I  say,  is  evidently  the  design  of  all 


IV.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BU1UALS  BILL.  319 

forms  for  public  use  on  serious  and  solemn  occasions. 
No  one  will  say  that  the  common  Englishman  glides 
off-hand  and  by  nature  into  a  strain  pure,  noble,  and 
elevated.  On  the  contrary,  he  falls  with  great  ease 
into  vulgarity.  But  no  people  has  shown  more  attach- 
ment than  the  English  to  old  and  dignified  forms 
calculated  to  save  us  from  it. 

Such  is  the  origin  and  such  is  the  defence  of  the 
use  of  a  set  form  of  burial-service  in  our  public 
churchyards.  It  stands  on  the  same  ground  as  the 
use  of  all  appointed  forms  whatever,  in  public  places 
and  on  serious  occasions.  It  is  designed  to  save 
public  places  and  occasions,  and  to  save  our  char- 
acter as  a  community,  from  being  discredited  through 
what  the  caprice  and  vulgarity  of  individuals  might 
prompt  them  to.  The  moment  a  place  has  a  public 
and  national  character,  there  emerges  the  require- 
ment of  a  public  form  for  use  there.  And  therefore 
it  is  really  quite  marvellous  to  find  a  man  of  Lord 
Selborne's  acuteness  maintaining,  that  to  withhold 
from  the  Dissenting  minister  the  right,  as  the  Times 
says,  "to  enter  the  churchyard  and  have  his  own 
say  over  his  own  spiritual  son  or  daughter,"  is  "to 
deny  after  death  that  religious  liberty,  which  in 
every  other  respect  is  given  to  the  deceased  during 
the  whole  of  their  lives."  To  be  sure,  Lord  Selborne 
was  speaking  in  a  parliamentary  debate,  where  per- 
haps it  is  lawful  to  employ  any  fallacy  which  your 
adversaries  cannot  at  the  moment  expose.  But  is  it 
possible  that  Lord  Selborne  can  himself  have  been 
deceived  by  the  argument,   that   to  refuse  to  Dis- 


350       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [iv. 

senters  the  liberty  to  have  what  services  they  please 
performed  over  them  in  the  parish  churchyard,  is  to 
"deny  after  death  that  religious  liberty,  which  in 
every  other  respect  is  given  to  the  deceased  during 
the  whole  of  their  lives'?"  True,  the  deceased  have 
had  religious  liberty  during  their  lives,  have  been 
free  to  choose  what  religious  services  they  pleased. 
But  where  1  In  private  places.  They  have  no  more 
been  free,  during  their  lifetime,  to  have  what  pro- 
ceedings they  liked  in  the  parish  church  and  in  the 
parish  churchyard,  than  to  have  what  proceedings 
they  liked  in  the  House  of  Lords  or  in  the  Court 
of  Chancery.  And  for  the  same  reason  in  each  case  : 
that  these  places  are  public  places,  and  that  to  safe- 
guard the  worthy  use  of  public  places  we  have  public 
forms. 

That  liberty,  then,  in  his  choice  of  religious  pro- 
ceedings, which  the  deceased  Dissenter  enjoyed  during 
his  lifetime,  or  which  any  Englishman  enjoys,  is  a 
liberty  exercisable  only  in  private  places.  The  Dis- 
senter, like  other  people,  enjoys  just  the  same  liberty 
after  his  death.  To  refuse  to  any  and  every  indivi- 
dual the  liberty  to  dictate  after  his  death  what  shall 
be  done  and  said  in  a  place  set  apart  for  national  use, 
and  belonging  to  the  public,  is  just  the  same  abridg- 
ment of  his  religious  liberty, — as  much  and  as  little 
an  abridgment  of  it, — as  he  has  been  subjected  to  dur- 
ing the  whole  course  of  his  life.  He  has  never  during 
his  whole  life  been  free  to  have,  in  such  a  place, 
whomsoever  he  likes  "  enter  the  ground  and  have  his 
own  sa}^."     He  is  not  free  to  have  it  after  his  death. 


i  v.J  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BUEIALS  BILL.  351 

It  is  impossible  to  establish  a  distinction  between 
a  man's  rights  in  regard  to  his  burial,  and  his  rights 
in  regard  to  other  public  incidents,  as  they  are  called, 
of  his  life.  They  are  optional,  it  is  sometimes  said ; 
burial  is  necessary.  Even  were  this  true,  it  would 
prove  nothing  as  to  a  need  for  exemption  in  burial, 
rather  than  in  other  matters,  from  the  requirement  of 
public  forms  in  public  places.  Burial  is  necessary, 
but  not  burial  in  public  places.  But  the  proposition 
is  practically  not  true.  For  practical  purposes,  and 
in  regard  to  mankind  in  general,  it  is  not  true  that 
marriage  is  optional.  It  is  not  even  true  that  religious 
worship  is  optional.  Human  nature  being  what  it  is, 
and  society  being  what  it  is,  religious  worship  and 
marriage  may  both  of  them,  like  burial,  be  called 
necessary.  They  come  in  the  regular  course  of  things 
and  engage  men's  sentiments  widely  and  deeply. 
And  everything  that  can  be  said  about  the  naturalness 
of  a  man's  wishing  to  be  buried  in  the  parish  church- 
yard by  a  minister  of  his  own  persuasion  and  with  a 
service  to  his  own  liking,  may  be  said  about  the 
naturalness  of  his  wishing  to  be  married  in  the 
parish  church  in  like  fashion.  And  the  same  of 
worshipping  in  the  parish  church.  It  is  natural  that 
a  man  should  wish  to  enjoy,  in  his  own  parish  church, 
worship  of  his  own  choice,  conducted  by  a  minister 
of  his  own  selecting.  And  the  hearty  believers  in  a 
man's  natural  right  to  have  in  the  parish  churchyard 
a  burial  to  his  own  liking,  do  not  conceal  that  they 
believe  also  in  a  man's  natural  right  to  have  in  the 
parish  church  a  worship  to  his  own  liking.     "Let 


352       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [iv. 

me  be  honest  about  it,"  said  Sir  Wilfrid  Lawson  at 
Carlisle ;  "if  you  let  the  Nonconformist  into  the 
churchyard,  that  is  only  a  step  towards  letting  him 
into  the  church."  The  two  rights  do,  in  fact,  stand 
on  precisely  the  same  footing.  If  the  naturalness  of 
a  man's  wishing  for  a  thing  creates  for  him  a  right  to 
do  it,  then  a  Dissenter  can  urge  his  right  to  have  his 
own  minister  say  his  say  over  him  in  the  parish 
churchyard.  Equally  can  he  urge  his  right  to  have 
his  own  minister  say  his  say  to  him  in  the  parish 
church. 

What  bars  the  right  is  in  both  cases  just  the  same 
thing  :  the  higher  right  of  the  community.  For  the 
credit  and  welfare  of  the  community,  public  forms 
are  appointed  to  be  observed  in  public  places.  The 
will  and  pleasure  of  individuals  is  not  to  have  sway 
there.  This  is  what  bars  the  Nonconformist's  right 
to  have  in  his  lifetime  what  minister  and  service  he 
likes  in  the  parish  church.  It  is  also  what  bars  his 
right  to  have  after  his  death  what  minister  and 
service  he  likes  in  the  parish  churchyard. 

Certain  clergymen  have  been  arbitrary,  insolent, 
and  vexatious,  in  exercising  the  power  given  to  them 
by  that  rubric  which  excludes  unbaptized  persons 
from  a  legal  claim  to  the  burial-service  of  the  Church 
of  England.  I  can  understand  people  being  provoked 
into  a  desire  to  "  give  a  lesson,"  as  Lord  Coleridge 
said,  to  such  clergymen,  by  admitting  Dissenting 
ministers  to  perform  burial-services  in  the  church- 
yard. I  can  understand  the  better  spirits  among  the 
clergy  being  disposed,  out  of  shame  and  regret  at  the 


IV.]  A  LAST  WOBD  ON  THE  BUEIALS  BILL.  353 

doings  of  some  of  their  brethren,  to  concede  to  Dis- 
senters what  they  desire  in  the  matter  of  burials.  I 
can  understand  their  being  disposed  to  concede  it, 
too,  out  of  love  of  peace,  and  from  the  wish  to  end 
disputes  and  to  conciliate  adversaries  by  abandoning 
a  privilege.  But  the  requirement  of  a  fixed  burial- 
service  in  the  parish  churchyard  is  not  made  for  the 
benefit  of  the  clergy,  or  in  order  to  confer  upon  the 
clergy  a  privilege.  It  is  made  for  the  benefit  of  the 
community.  It  is  not  to  be  abandoned  out  of  resent- 
ment against  those  who  abuse  it,  or  out  of  generosity 
on  the  part  of  the  more  liberal  clergy.  They  are 
generous  with  what  is  really,  however  it  may  appear 
to  them,  not  a  privilege  of  theirs,  but  a  safeguard  of 
ours.  If  it  is  for  the  advantage  of  the  community 
that  in  public  places  some  public  form  should  be 
followed,  if  the  community  runs  risk  of  discredit 
from  suffering  individuals  to  say  and  do  what  they 
like  in  such  places,  and  if  the  burial-service  of  the 
Church  of  England  is  enjoined  on  this  principle,  then 
it  is  not  to  be  given  up  in  order  to  punish  the  folly 
of  some  of  the  clergy  or  to  gratify  the  generosity  of 
others.  If  the  principle  on  which  it  has  been  en- 
joined is  sound,  the  service  is  to  be  retained  for  the 
sake  of  this  principle. 

And  so  evidently  sound  is  the  principle,  that  the 
politicians  who  take  the  Dissenters'  cause  in  hand 
cannot  help  feeling  its  force.  Mr.  Osborne  Morgan 
proposes,  while  allowing  the  Dissenters  to  have  their 
own  services  in  the  parish  churchyard,  to  "  make 
proper  provision  for  order  and  decency."    Lord  Gran- 

VOL.  VII.  2  A 


354       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [iv. 

ville  stipulates  that  the  services  shall  be  conducted 
"in  an  orderly  and  Christian  manner."  But  unless 
these  are  mere  words,  meant  to  save  appearances  but 
not  to  have  any  real  operation,  we  are  thus  brought 
back  to  the  use  of  some  public  and  recognised  form 
for  burials  in  the  parish  churchyard.  And  the  burial- 
service  of  the  Church  of  England  was  meant  for  a 
public  and  recognised  form  of  this  kind,  which  people 
at  large  could  accept,  and  which  ensured  an  "  orderly 
and  Christian  "  character  to  proceedings  in  the  parish 
churchyard.  Proceedings  dependent  solely  on  the 
will  and  pleasure  of  chance  individuals,  and  liable  to 
bear  the  marks  of  their  "  natural  taste  for  the 
bathos,"  as  Swift  calls  it,  cannot  ensure  this  character. 
But  proceedings  in  a  public  place  ought  to  have  it. 
And  that  they  ought,  the  very  politicians  who 
advocate  the  Dissenters'  cause  admit. 

So  it  is  a  case  for  revision  of  the  public  form  of 
burial  at  present  imposed.  The  burial-service  of  the 
Prayer  Book  was  meant  to  be  used  in  the  parish 
churchyard  over  all  Christians, — meant  to  suit  all. 
It  does  not  suit  all.  Some  people  object  to  things  in 
the  service  itself.  More  object  to  being  strictly  con- 
fined to  that  service  only.  More  still  object  to  being 
deprived,  in  their  burial,  of  the  offices  of  a  minister 
of  their  own  persuasion.  On  the  other  hand,  a  self- 
willed  clergyman  is  enabled  by  a  rubric  of  the  burial- 
service  to  withhold  its  use  in  some  cases  where  its 
use  is  desired,  and  where  to  withhold  it  is  both 
foolish  and  cruel.  Such  is  the  present  state  of  things. 
And  it  has  to  be  dealt  with  by  means  of  some  change 


iv.]  A  LAST  WOED  ON  THE  BUEIALS  BILL.  355 

or  other,  which  shall  remove  causes  for  just  discontent, 
without  abandoning  the  principle  of  requiring  proper 
and  worthy  forms  to  be  observed  at  proceedings  in  the 
parish  churchyard. 

III. 

There  is  division  among  Christians,  and  in  no 
country  are  they  found  all  agreeing  to  adopt  the  same 
forms  and  ministers  of  religion.  Different  bodies  of 
Christians  have  their  own  forms  and  ministers.  And 
except  in  England  these  different  bodies  have,  it  is 
said,  the  churchyard  in  common.  In  Ireland  it  is  so. 
In  Scotland  there  is,  as  in  England,  an  Established 
Church ;  yet  in  Scotland  the  forms  and  ministers  of 
other  religious  bodies  are  admitted  to  the  use  of  the 
parish  churchyard.  In  France  the  Catholics  are  in 
an  enormous  majority,  yet  Protestants  can  be  buried 
with  their  own  forms  in  the  graveyards  of  Catholic 
churches.  In  Germany,  where  both  Catholics  and 
Protestants  are  found  in  great  numbers,  and  much 
intermixed,  the  churchyards  of  the  one  confession 
are  open  to  the  burial-rites  of  the  other. 

Now,  in  comparing  the  Church  of  England  with 
other  Churches,  it  is  right  to  remember  one  character 
which  distinguishes  it  from  all  of  them.  The  Church 
of  England  was  meant,  in  the  intention  of  those  who 
settled  it  at  the  Reformation,  to  satisfy  the  whole 
English  people  and  to  be  accepted  by  them.  It  was 
meant  to  include  both  Catholics  and  Protestants  in  a 
compromise  between  old  and  new,  rejecting  Romish 
corruptions  and  errors,  but  retaining  from   Catholi- 


356       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [iv. 

cism  all  that  was  sound  and  truly  attaching,  and  thus 
to  provide  a  revised  form  of  religion,  adapted  to  the 
nation  at  large  as  things  then  stood,  and  receivable 
by  it.  No  other  Church  has  been  settled  with  the 
like  design.  And  therefore  no  other  Church  stands 
precisely  on  the  like  ground  in  offering  its  formularies 
to  people.  For  whereas  other  Churches,  in  offering 
their  formularies  to  people,  offer  them  with  the  recom- 
mendation that  here  is  truth  and  everywhere  else  is 
error,  the  Church  of  England,  in  offering  its  formu- 
laries to  Englishmen,  offers  them  with  the  recom- 
mendation that  here  is  truth  presented  expressly  so 
as  to  suit  and  unite  the  English  nation.  And  there- 
fore to  no  Church  can  dissent  be  so  mortifying  as  to 
the  Church  of  England ;  because  dissent  is  the  denial, 
not  only  of  her  profession  of  the  truth,  but  also  of  her 
success  in  her  direct  design.  However,  this  cannot 
make  things  otherwise  than  they  are.  The  Church 
of  England,  whatever  may  have  been  its  design,  does 
not  manage  to  satisfy  every  one  any  more  than  the 
Churches  in  other  countries.  And  whatever  special 
mortification  she  may  have  cause  for,  in  seeing,  around 
her,  forms  and  ministers  of  religion  other  than  her 
own,  that  is  no  reason  why  she  should  be  less  liberal 
in  her  dealings  with  them  than  the  Churches  in  other 
countries.  Either  she  must  manage  to  suit  them 
herself,  or  she  must  be  liberal  to  them. 

Eeciprocity,  at  any  rate,  is  but  fair.  If  the  burial- 
rites  of  the  Church  of  England  are  admitted  to  Pres- 
byterian churchyards  in  Scotland,  and  to  Catholic 
churchyards   in  Ireland,  the  burial- rites  of   Scotch 


IV.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BURIALS  BILL.  357 

Presbyterians  and  of  Irish  Catholics  ought  surely  to 
be  admitted  to  Anglican  churchyards.  There  can  be 
no  fear  that  the  burial-rite  of  either  should  do  dis- 
credit to  the  churchyard.  The  funerals  of  Scotch 
Presbyterians  are  conducted,  I  believe,  in  silence.  In 
a  silent  interment  there  can  be  nothing  offensive. 
The  Catholic  offices  for  the  dead  are  the  source  from 
whence  our  own  are  taken.  In  either  case  we  have 
the  security  for  decency  which  the  deliberate  public 
consent  of  large  and  well-known  bodies  of  our  fellow 
Christians  affords  on  behalf  of  the  burial-rites  in  use 
with  them.  Great  bodies,  like  these,  are  not  likely 
to  have  given  their  sanction  to  a  form  of  burial- 
service  discreditable  to  a  public  churchyard  and  inad- 
missible there.  And  if  we  had  only  to  deal  with  the 
Presbyterians  and  the  Catholics,  the  burials  question 
would  present  itself  under  conditions  very  different 
from  those  which  now  do  actually  attend  it.  Nay,  if 
the  English  Dissenters  were  reducible,  even,  to  a  few 
great  divisions, —  suppose  to  the  well-known  three 
denominations, — and  either  there  were  a  common 
form  of  burial-service  among  these  denominations, 
or  each  denomination  had  its  own ;  and  if  the  Dis- 
senters were  content  to  be  thus  classed,  and  to  adhere 
either  to  a  single  form  of  Dissenters'  burial-service,  or 
to  one  out  of  two  or  three ;  then,  also,  the  case  would 
be  different. 

But  these  are  not  the  conditions  under  which  we 
are  dealing  with  the  burials  question.  The  dissidence 
of  Dissent  and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant 
religion  have  brought  the  Dissenters  in  England  to 


358       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [iv. 

classify  themselves,  not  in  two  or  three  divisions,  but 
in,  I  believe,  one  hundred  and  thirty -eight.  And 
their  contention  is,  that  no  matter  how  they  may 
split  themselves  up,  they  have  still  their  right  to  the 
churchyard, — new  sects  as  much  as  old,  small  sects 
as  much  as  great,  obscure  sects  as  much  as  famous  ; 
Ranters,  Recreative  Religionists,  and  Peculiar  People, 
as  much  as  Presbyterians  and  Baptists.  And  no  man 
is  entitled  to  tell  them  that  they  must  manage  to 
agree  among  themselves  upon  one  admissible  form  of 
burial-service  or  upon  one  or  two  admissible  forms. 
That  would  be  restricting  their  religious  liberty.  "  It 
is  a  misapprehension,"  the  Times,  their  advocate,  tells 
us,  "  of  the  essential  nature  of  a  Nonconformist,  to 
suppose  that  he  could  ever  pledge  himself  to  conform 
to  anything.  The  essence  of  his  demand  is  to  claim 
free  access  to  sacred  places,  which  the  necessity  of 
nature  compels  him  to  use,  with  such  observances 
as  the  principles  of  his  communion  may  prescribe." 
Whether  the  observances  are  seemly,  and  such  as  to 
befit  a  public  and  venerable  place,  we  are  not  to  ask. 
Probably  the  Dissenters  themselves  think  that  a 
man's  conscience  recommending  them  to  him  makes 
them  so.  And  what  Lord  Granville  and  Mr.  Osborne 
Morgan  and  the  political  friends  of  the  Dissenters 
think  on  this  matter,  and  how  they  propose  to  ensure 
the  decent  and  Christian  order  for  which  they  stipu- 
late, and  at  the  same  time  not  to  violate  that  essential 
principle  of  a  Nonconformist's  nature  which  forbids 
him  in  religion  "ever  to  pledge  himself  to  conform 
to  anything,"  does  not  quite  appear.     Perhaps  they 


iv.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BURIALS  BILL.  359 

have  not  looked  into  the  thing  much.  Or  they  may 
think  that  it  does  not  matter  much,  and  that  the 
observances  of  one  body  of  religionists  are  likely  to 
be  about  as  good  as  those  of  another. 

Yet  surely  there  is  likely  to  be  a  wide  difference 
between  the  observances  of  a  great  body  like  the 
Presbyterians,  counting  its  adherents  by  hundreds  of 
thousands,  having  existed  for  a  long  time,  and  possess- 
ing a  well-known  reason  for  existence,  —  counting, 
also,  amongst  its  adherents,  a  great  mass  of  educated 
people,  —  there  is  likely  to  be  a  wide  difference 
between  the  observances  of  a  body  like  this,  and 
the  observances  of  such  a  body,  say,  as  the  Peculiar 
People.  Both  are  Dissenters  in  England.  But  one 
affords  the  same  sort  of  security,  that  its  proceedings 
in  a  parish  churchyard  will  be  decorous,  which  Angli- 
canism itself  affords.  The  other  affords  no  such 
security  at  all.  And  it  is  precisely  in  the  country 
churchyards,  if  accessible  to  them,  that  the  obser- 
vances of  ignorant  and  fanatical  little  sects  would 
parade  themselves ;  for  these  sects  are  found  above 
all  in  country  places,  where  there  are  no  cemeteries, 
and  not  in  great  towns,  where  these  are.  And  we 
are  not  to  take  security  against  such  a  violation  of 
the  parish  churchyard,  by  requiring  the  hundred  and 
thirty-eight  Dissenting  sects  to  agree  to  one  or  more 
authorisable  forms  of  burial-service  for  themselves, 
if  they  object  to  the  burial-service  of  the  Church  of 
England,  because,  where  religious  observances  are 
concerned,  "it  is  the  essential  nature  of  a  Noncon- 
formist not  to    pledge  himself   to  conform  to  any- 


360       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUKCH  AND  RELIGION.       [iv. 

thing  ! "  But  the  Nonconformist's  pretension,  to  be 
dispensed  from  pledging  himself  thus,  can  only  be 
allowed  so  long  as  he  is  content  to  forego,  in  exercis- 
ing it,  the  use  of  places  with  a  public  and  national 
character.  To  admit  such  a  pretension  in  those  using, 
for  any  purpose,  a  place  with  a  public  and  national 
character,  is  a  mere  plunge  into  barbarism. 

The  example  of  foreign  countries  is  quoted,  and  of 
the  foreign  countries  most  like  our  own,  France  and 
Germany.  In  France  there  are  many  churchyards 
with  a  separate  portion  for  Protestants,  and  in  this 
separate  portion  Protestants  are  buried  with  their 
own  rites  and  by  their  own  ministers.  This,  as  has 
been  pointed  out,  is  not  what  our  Dissenters  wish 
for  or  would  accept.  In  Germany  there  is  no  such 
separation,  and  Protestants  are  buried  in  Catholic 
churchyards  by  their  own  ministers,  with  their  own 
rites.  But,  in  either  case,  what  Protestants?  In 
France,  Protestants  belonging  to  the  Reformed,  or 
Calvinistic,  Church ;  a  Church  with  a  great  history, 
a  Church  well  known,  with  a  well-known  rite,  and 
paid  and  recognised  by  the  State  equally  with  the 
Catholic  Church.  In  Germany,  Protestants  belonging 
to  the  Lutheran  Church,  to  the  Calvinistic  Church, 
and  to  the  Church  formed  by  the  union  of  the  two. 
Like  the  Reformed  Church  in  France,  these  are  all  of 
them  public  bodies,  with  a  public  status,  a  recognised 
rite,  and  offering  sound  security  for  their  proper  use 
of  a  public  place  like  the  churchyard.  Do  English 
people  imagine  that  in  France  or  Germany,  whose 
liberality  is  vaunted  at  the  expense  of  ours,  Ranters 


IV.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BURIALS  BILL.  361 

or  Eecreative  Eeligionists  or  Peculiar  People  are 
all  of  them  free  to  "  have  their  say "  in  the  parish 
churchyards  1  Do  they  imagine  that  in  the  use,  such 
as  it  is,  of  Catholic  churchyards  by  Protestants  in 
France  and  Germany,  the  "essential  principle"  of 
our  English  Nonconformist,  "not  to  pledge  himself 
to  conform  to  anything,"  is  allowed  to  have  sway1? 
If  they  do,  they  are  very  much  mistaken. 

Nothing,  therefore,  in  the  example  of  France  and 
Germany  condemns  the  taking  a  security  from  those 
who  are  admitted  to  use  their  burial-rites  in  the  parish 
churchyard.  If  Catholics  and  the  three  Dissenting 
denominations  were  admitted,  each  with  a  recognised 
burial-service,  to  our  churchyards,  that  would  be,  in 
a  general  way,  a  following  of  the  precedent  set  by 
France  and  Germany ; — at  any  rate,  of  the  precedent 
set  by  Germany.  But  to  this  the  Nonconformists 
themselves  will  never  consent,  therefore  it  is  idle  to 
propose  it.  And  there  are  other  reasons,  too,  for  not 
proposing  such  an  arrangement  in  this  country.  In 
the  first  place,  it  is  not  required  in  order  to  ensure 
religious  burial  for  Christians  of  all  kinds.  The 
Church  of  England,  as  has  been  already  said,  was 
expressly  meant  to  serve  the  needs  of  the  whole 
community.  And  speaking  broadly  and  generally, 
one  may  say  that  the  whole  Christian  community 
has  at  present  a  legal  right  to  her  burial-offices,  and 
does  obtain  them.  The  Catholic  Church  does  not 
bury  Protestants,  but  the  Church  of  England  buries 
Protestants  and  Catholics  alike.  Then,  too,  the  mass 
of  the  Protestant  Dissenters  use  the  burial-service  of 


362       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.       [iv. 

the  Church  of  England  without  objection.     And  the 
country  is  accustomed  from  of  old  to  see  used  in  the 
parish  churchyards  this  burial-service  only,  and  to 
see   it   performed   by  the  clergyman  only.     Public 
feeling  would  certainly  be  displeased  by  a  startling 
innovation  in  such  a  matter,  without  urgent  need. 
And  there  is  no  urgent  need.     Again,  there  is  cer- 
tainly a  danger  that  Catholics,  their  position  towards 
the  Church  of  England  being  what  it  is,  might  be 
disposed,  if  they  were  admitted  with  their  ceremonies 
to  the  parish  churchyards,  to  make  capital,  as  the 
phrase  is,  out  of  that  event,  to  render  it  subservient 
to  farther  ends  of  their  own.     And  this  danger  does 
not  exist  on  the  Continent,  for  there  the  Catholics 
stand  towards  no  Protestant  Church  in  the  position 
which  here  they  hold  towards  the  Church  of  England. 
It  does  not  exist  in  Scotland,  where  the  Established 
Church  is  not  (I  may  say  it,  I  hope,  as  I  mean  it, 
without  offence)  a  sufficiently  great  affair  to  tempt 
Catholics  to  make  capital  out  of  the  admission  of 
their  rites  to  the  parish  churchyards.     All  this  would 
incline  one  to  keep  the  practice  as  to  burials  in  the 
main  as  it  is  now,  in  the  English  churchyards,  unless 
there  is  some  clear  hardship  in  it. 

Such  a  hardship  is  found  by  some  people  in  the 
mere  fact  of  not  being  free  to  choose  one's  own  rite 
and  one's  own  minister.  As  to  the  free  choice  of  rite 
in  a  public  place,  enough  has  been  said;  and  it  is 
admitted  that  in  itself  the  burial-rite  of  the  Church 
of  England  is  not  generally  unacceptable.  There 
remains  the  hardship  of  not  being  able  to  have  one's 


iv.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BURIALS  BILL.  363 

own  minister  to  bury  one.  The  language  used  by 
Lord  Granville  on  this  topic  was  surprising.  No 
doubt,  the  feelings  may  be  soothed  and  pleased  by 
the  thought  that  the  service  over  one's  remains  will 
be  performed  by  a  friend  and  acquaintance,  not  by  a 
stranger.  But  to  say  that  the  sentiment  demanding 
this  satisfaction  is  so  deep  and  natural  that  its 
demands  must  without  fail  be  obeyed,  and  that 
much  ought  to  be  sacrificed  in  order  to  enable  us 
to  obey  them,  is  really  ridiculous.  From  the  nature 
of  things,  such  a  sentiment  cannot  generally  be 
indulged.  Life  and  its  chances  being  what  they 
are,  to  expect  that  the  minister,  whose  services  we 
require  to  bury  us,  shall  be  at  the  same  time  a  friend 
or  acquaintance,  shall  be  at  any  rate  a  man  of  our 
own  choosing,  is  extravagant.  That  the  form  fixed 
for  him  to  follow  in  ministering  over  us  shall  in  itself 
be  proper  and  acceptable,  is  the  great  matter.  This 
being  once  secured,  the  more  we  forget  the  func- 
tionary in  the  service,  the  better.  The  Anglican 
burial-service  has  a  person  appointed  to  read  it :  the 
parish  clergyman.  In  itself,  the  Anglican  burial- 
service  is  considered,  by  the  great  majority  of  Pro- 
testant Dissenters,  fit  and  acceptable.  And  it  is 
taken,  almost  every  word  of  it,  from  the  Catholic 
offices  of  religion,  the  old  common  form  of  worship 
for  Christendom.  For  a  national  Christian  burial- 
service  this  is  surely  enough.  The  service  is  both 
approved  and  approvable.  But  Lord  Granville's 
sentiment,  it  seems,  is  wounded,  unless  he  may  also 
approve  the  minister  who  is  to  read  it  over  him.     I 


364       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [iv. 

should    never    have    credited    him   with    so   much 
scrupulosity. 

A  parishioner's  right  to  be  buried  in  the  parish 
churchyard,  with  this  approved  and  approvable  burial- 
service,  is  what  we  really  have  to  guard.  The  real 
grievance  is  when  this  right  is  infringed.  It  is  occa- 
sionally infringed,  and  infringed  very  improperly  and 
vexatiously.  The  means  for  infringing  it  are  afforded 
by  the  rubric  prefixed  to  the  burial-service,  a  rubric 
directing  that  "  the  office  ensuing  is  not  to  be  used 
for  any  that  die  unbaptized,  or  excommunicate,  or 
have  laid  violent  hands  upon  themselves."  Ex- 
communication is  no  longer  practised.  To  refuse 
the  burial -office  to  suicides  is  a  penal  measure,  in 
the  abstract  perhaps  consonant  with  public  opinion, 
practically,  however,  in  all  but  extreme  cases,  evaded 
by  treating  the  suicide  as  of  unsound  mind.  In  the 
denial  of  the  burial -office  to  "any  that  die  unbap- 
tized "  lies  the  true  source  of  grievance. 

The  office  is  meant  for  Christians,  and  this  was 
what  the  rubric  intended,  no  doubt,  to  mark; 
baptism  being  taken  as  the  stamp  common  to  all 
Christians.  But  a  large  and  well-known  sect  of 
Christians,  the  Baptists,  defer  baptism  until  the 
recipient  is  of  adult  age,  and  their  children,  there- 
fore, if  they  die,  die  unbaptized.  To  inquire  whether 
a  child  presented  for  burial  is  a  Baptist's  child  or  not, 
is  an  inquiry  which  no  judicious  and  humane  clergy- 
man would  make.  The  office  was  meant  for  Chris- 
tians, and  Baptists  are  Christians,  for  surely  they  do 
not  cease  to  be  so  because  of  their  tenet  of  adult 


iv.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BURIALS  BILL.  365 

baptism.  Adult  baptism  was  undoubtedly  the  primi- 
tive usage,  although  the  change  of  usage  adopted  by 
the  Church  was  natural  and  legitimate,  and  the 
sticklers  (as  may  so  often  be  said  of  the  sticklers 
in  these  questions)  would  have  been  wiser  had  they 
acquiesced  in  it.  But  the  rubric  dresses  the  clergy- 
man in  an  authority  for  investigating  and  excluding, 
which  enables  a  violent  and  unwise  man  to  play 
tricks  that  might,  indeed,  make  the  angels  weep. 
Where  he  has  the  law  on  his  side,  he  can  refuse 
the  burial-service  outright  to  innocent  infants  and 
children  the  most  piously  brought  up ;  he  can,  under 
pretence  of  doubt  and  inquiry,  adjourn,  and  often 
withhold  it,  where  he  has  not. 

Such  a  man  does  harm  to  the  Church ;  but  it  is 
not  likely  that  he  will  have  the  sense  to  see  this, 
when  he  has  not  eyes  to  see  what  harm  he  does  to 
himself.  There  may  not  be  many  of  such  men,  but 
a  few  make  a  great  noise,  and  do  a  great  deal  of 
mischief.  There  is  no  stronger  proof  of  the  immense 
power  of  inspiring  attachment  which  the  Church  of 
England  possesses,  and  of  the  lovable  and  admirable 
qualities  shown  by  many  of  the  clergy,  than  that  the 
Church  should  still  have  so  strong  a  hold  upon  the 
affections  of  the  country,  in  spite  of  such  mischief- 
makers.  If  the  Church  ever  loses  it  and  is  broken 
up,  it  will  be  by  their  fault.  It  was  the  view  of 
this  sort  of  people  with  their  want  of  temper  and 
want  of  judgment,  the  view  of  their  mischievous 
action,  exerting  itself  with  all  the  pugnacity  and 
tenacity  of  the  British  character,  and  of  their  fatal 


366       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUECH  AND  KELIGION.        [iv. 

prominence,  which  moved  Clarendon,  a  sincere  friend 
of  the  Church  of  England,  to  that  terrible  sentence 
of  his :  "  Clergymen,  who  understand  the  least,  and 
take  the  worst  measure  of  human  affairs,  of  all 
mankind  that  can  write  and  read  ! " 

The  truly  desirable,  the  indispensable  change  in 
the  regulation  of  burials,  is  to  remove  the  power  of 
doing  mischief  which  such  persons  now  enjoy.  And 
the  best  way  to  remove  it,  is  to  strike  out  the  first 
rubric  to  the  burial-service  altogether.  Excommuni- 
cated persons  there  are  none  to  exclude.  What  is 
gained  by  insisting  on  the  exclusion  of  suicides  1  In 
nine  cases  out  of  ten,  the  plea  of  unsound  mind  is  at 
present  used  to  prevent  their  exclusion,  from  the 
natural  feeling  that  to  exclude  them  is  really  to  visit 
their  offence,  not  upon  them,  but  upon  their  relations 
and  friends, — to  punish  the  living  for  the  fault  of  the 
dead.  Where  ought  the  widest  latitude  of  merciful 
construction  to  be  more  permitted,  where  ought 
rigidity  in  sentencing,  condemning,  and  excluding  to 
be  more  discouraged,  than  in  giving  or  withholding 
Christian  burial  1  Of  the  test  of  baptism  we  have 
just  now  spoken.  It  was  meant  as  a  test  of  the 
Christian  profession  of  those  buried  in  a  Christian 
churchyard.  The  test  excludes  many  whose  Chris- 
tian profession  is  undoubted.  But  with  regard  to 
this  profession,  again,  where  is  the  virtue  of  being 
jealously  critical  after  a  man's  death  and  when  he  is 
brought  for  burial  ?  What  good  end  can  be  served 
by  severity  here,  what  harm  prevented  1  Those  who 
were  avowedly  and  notoriously  not  Christians,  will, 


IV.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BURIALS  BILL.  367 

it  may  be  supposed,  have  forbidden  their  friends  to 
bring  them  for  Christian  burial.  If  their  friends  do 
bring  them,  that  is  in  fact  to  recant  on  behalf  of  the 
dead  his  errors,  and  to  make  him  profess  Christianity. 
Surely  the  Church  can  be  satisfied  with  that,  so  far, 
at  least,  as  not  to  refuse  him  burial !  But,  in  fact, 
the  great  majority  of  those  who  reject  Christianity, 
and  who  openly  say  so,  have  nevertheless  been 
baptized,  and  cannot  be  excluded  from  Christian 
burial.  Can  it  be  imagined,  that  the  mere  rite  of 
baptism  is  a  rite  the  non-performance  of  which  on  a 
man  during  his  lifetime  makes  the  Christian  burial 
of  him,  after  his  death,  a  vain  and  impious  mockery  1 
Yes,  clergymen  can  be  found  who  imagine  even  this. 
Clergymen  write  and  print  that  their  conscience  will 
not  suffer  them  to  pronounce  words  of  hope  over  an 
unbaptized  person,  because  Jesus  Christ  said :  "  Ex- 
cept a  man  be  born  of  water  and  of  the  Spirit,  he 
cannot  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God."  Perhaps  no 
vagaries  in  the  way  of  misinterpretation  of  Scripture- 
texts  ought  to  cause  surprise,  the  thing  is  so  common. 
But  this  misinterpretation  of  Jesus  Christ's  words  is 
peculiarly  perverse,  because  it  makes  him  say  just 
the  very  opposite  of  what  he  meant  to  say.  "  Except 
a  man  be  cleansed  and  receive  a  neio  influence"  Jesus 
meant  to  say,  "  he  cannot  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
God."  And  St.  Peter  explains  what  this  being  cleansed 
is  :  "  The  answer  of  a  good  conscience  towards  God," 
— of  which  baptism  is  merely  the  figure.  Reliance 
on  miracles,  reliance  on  supposed  privileges,  reliance 
on  external  rites  of  any  kind,  are  exactly  what  our 


368       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUKCH  AND  EELIGION.        [iv. 

Saviour  meant,  in  the  words  given  in  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  to  condemn; — reliance  on  anything,  except 
an  interior  change. 

The    rubric   in   question,    therefore,    might   with 
advantage   be  expunged  altogether.      If   clergymen 
complain  that  they  shall  then  be  compelled  to  pro- 
nounce words  of  hope  and  assurance  in  cases  where 
it  is  shocking,  and  a  mere  mockery,  to  use  them,  it 
is  to  be  said  that  this  they  are  just  as  much  com- 
pelled to  do  now.     But  no  doubt  such  a  necessity 
ought  not  to  be  imposed  upon  the  clergy.     And  in 
some  cases,  so  long  as  the  service  stands  as  it  does 
now,  it    is   imposed  upon  them,   and    this    equally 
whether  the  rubric  is  struck  out  or  not.     The  words 
expressing  good  hope  concerning  the  particular  person 
buried  impose  it.     But  perhaps  what  has  been  said 
of  the  unadvisableness  of  using  the  occasion  of  burial 
for  passing  sentence  of  condemnation  or  pronouncing 
an  opinion  against  the  particular  person  dead,  is  true 
also,  though  certainly  in  a  much  less  degree,  of  using 
it  for  pronouncing  an  opinion  in  his  favour.      We 
are  intruding  into  things  too  much  beyond  our  ken. 
At  any  rate,  even  though  the  bystanders,  who  know 
the  history  of  the  departed,  may  well  in  their  hearts 
apply  specially  to  him  the  hopes  and  promises  for  the 
righteous,    the   general   burial-service   has    another 
function.      It  moves  in  a  higher  region  than    this 
region  of  personal  application.     Its  grandeur  lies  in 
its  being  a  service  over  man  buried.     "  We  commit 
his  body  to  the  ground  in  the  sure  and  certain  hope 
of  the  resurrection  to  eternal  life,"  is  exactly  right. 


IV.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BURIALS  BILL.  369 

The  resurrection,  not  this  or  that  individual's  resur- 
rection. We  affirm  our  sure  and  certain  hope,  that 
for  man  a  resurrection  to  eternal  life  there  is.  To 
add  anything  like  a  pronouncement  concerning  this 
or  that  man's  special  share  in  it,  is  not  the  province 
of  a  general  service.  The  words,  "as  our  hope  is 
this  our  brother  doth,"  would  really  be  better  away. 
For  the  sake  of  the  service  itself,  its  truth,  solemnity, 
and  impressiveness,  they  would  be  better  away.  And 
if  they  were  away,  there  would  be  removed  with 
them  a  source  of  shock  and  distress  to  the  conscience 
of  the  officiating  clergyman,  which  exists  now,  and 
which,  he  might  say,  would  exist  even  more  were  the 
introductory  rubric  expunged. 

The  requirement  of  a  fixed  and  noble  form,  con- 
secrated by  use  and  sentiment,  as  the  national  burial- 
service  in  our  parish  churchyards,  is  a  thing  of  the 
highest  importance  and  value.  Speech-making  and 
prayer -making,  substitutions  or  additions  of  indi- 
vidual invention,  hazarded  ex  tempore,  seem  to  me 
unsuitable  and  undesirable  for  such  a  place  and  such 
an  occasion.  In  general,  what  it  is  sought  to  give 
utterance  to  by  them  can  find  its  proper  expression 
in  the  funeral-sermon  at  another  time.  With  hymns 
the  case  is  different.  They  are  not  inventions  made 
off-hand  by  individuals  round  the  grave.  We  at 
least  know  what  they  will  be,  and  we  are  safe  in 
them  from  the  incalculable  surprises  and  shocks  of  a 
speech  or  an  outpouring.  Hymns,  such  as  we  know 
them,  are  a  sort  of  composition  which  I  do  not  at  all 
admire.     I  freely  say  so  now,  as  I  have  often  said  it 

VOL.  VII.  2  B 


370       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [iv. 

before.  I  regret  their  prevalence  and  popularity 
amongst  us.  Taking  man  in  his  totality  and  in  the 
long  run,  bad  music  and  bad  poetry,  to  whatever 
good  and  useful  purposes  a  man  may  often  manage 
to  turn  them,  are  in  themselves  mischievous  and  de- 
teriorating to  him.  Somewhere  and  somehow,  and 
at  some  time  or  other,  he  has  to  pay  a  penalty  and 
to  suffer  a  loss  for  taking  delight  in  them.  It  is  bad 
for  people  to  hear  such  words  and  such  a  tune  as  the 
words  or  tune  of,  0  happy  place  !  when  shall  I  be,  my 
God,  with  thee,  to  see  thy  face? — worse  for  them  to 
take  pleasure  in  it.  And  the  time  will  come,  I  hope, 
when  we  shall  feel  the  unsatisfactoriness  of  our 
present  hymns,  and  they  will  disappear  from  our 
religious  services.  But  that  time  has  not  come  yet, 
and  will  not  be  brought  about  soon  or  suddenly. 
We  must  deal  with  circumstances  as  they  exist  for 
us.  Hymns  are  extremely  popular  both  with  Church- 
people  and  with  Dissenters.  Church  and  Dissent 
meet  here  on  a  common  ground ;  and  both  of  them 
admit,  in  hymns,  an  element  a  good  deal  less  worthy, 
certainly,  than  the  regular  liturgy,  but  also  a  good 
deal  less  fixed.  In  the  use  of  hymns  we  have  not, 
then,  as  in  the  use  of  speeches  and  extemporaneous 
prayings,  a  source  of  risk  to  our  public  religious 
services  from  which  they  are  at  present  free ;  for 
they  allow  of  hymns  already.  Here  are  means  for 
offering,  without  public  detriment,  a  concession  to 
Dissenters,  and  for  gratifying  their  wishes.  Many 
of  them  would  like,  in  burying  their  friends,  to  sing 
a  hymn  at  the  grave.     Let  them.     Some  concession 


TV.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BURIALS  BILL.  371 

has  been  already  proposed  in  the  way  of  allowing  a 
hymn  to  be  sung  as  the  funeral  enters  the  church- 
yard. Let  the  concession  be  made  more  free  and 
ample  ;  let  a  hymn  or  hymns  be  admitted  as  a  part 
of  the  regular  service  at  the  grave.  The  mourners 
should  have  to  give  notice  beforehand  to  the  clergy- 
man of  their  wish  for  the  hymn,  and  it  ought  to  be 
taken  from  one  of  the  collections  in  general  use. 

This  hymnody  would  lengthen  the  burial-service. 
In  view  of  this,  I  should  like  to  suggest  one  alteration 
in  that  beautiful  and  noble  service  ;  an  alteration  by 
which  time  might  be  got  for  the  hymn  when  desired, 
and  which  would  moreover  in  itself  be,  I  cannot  but 
think,  an  improvement.  The  burial-service  has  but 
one  lesson,  taken  out  of  the  fifteenth  chapter  of  the 
First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians.  The  passage  taken 
is  very  long,  and,  eloquent  and  interesting  as  it  is, 
yet  it  is  also,  as  a  whole,  very  difficult  to  understand. 
I  should  say  that  it  is  difficult  as  a  whole  because  as 
a  whole  it  is  embarrassed,  were  it  not  that  many 
people  cannot  conceive  of  an  inspired  writer  as  ever 
embarrassed.  I  will  not  raise  questions  of  this  kind 
now.  But  difficult  the  lesson  certainly  is ;  difficult, 
and  also  very  long.  Yet  it  has  parts  which  are  most 
grand  and  most  edifying ;  and  which  also,  taken  by 
themselves,  are  quite  clear.  And  a  lesson  of  Scrip- 
ture should  make,  as  far  as  possible,  a  broad,  deep, 
simple,  single  impression ;  and  it  should  bring  out 
that  impression  quite  clear.  Above  all,  a  lesson  used 
at  the  burial  of  the  dead,  and  with  the  hearers'  minds 
affected  as  they  then  are,  should  do  this.     It  should 


372        LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [iv. 

be  a  real  lesson,  not  merely  a  lection ;  which, — from 
our  habit  of  taking  for  this  purpose  long  readings, 
hardly  ever  less  than  an  entire  chapter,  and  in  which 
many  matters  are  treated, — our  lessons  read  in  church 
too  often  are. 

Now  the  offices  in  our  Prayer  Book  are,  as  has 
been  already  said,  for  the  most  part  made  up  out  of 
the  old  Catholic  offices,  the  common  religious  offices 
of  Christendom  before  it  was  divided.  But  whoever 
looks  at  a  Catholic  service-book  will  find  that  the 
lessons  there  are  in  general  very  much  shorter  than 
ours.  There  are  more  of  them  and  they  are  much 
shorter,  aiming  at  being  as  far  as  possible,  all  of  them, 
complete  wholes  in  themselves,  and  at  producing  one 
distinct,  powerful,  total  impression ;  which  is  the 
right  aim  for  lessons  to  follow.  To  this  end  chapters 
are  broken  up,  and  parts  of  them  taken  by  them- 
selves, and  verses  left  out,  and  things  which  are 
naturally  related  brought  together.  And  this  not  in 
the  least  with  a  controversial  design,  or  to  favour 
what  are  called  Eomish  doctrines,  but  simply  to  pro- 
duce a  clearer  and  stronger  impression.  The  unknown 
arranger  of  these  old  lessons  has  simply  followed  the 
instinct  of  a  true  critic,  the  promptings  of  a  sound 
natural  love  for  what  is  clear  and  impressive.  And 
in  following  this,  he  gives  an  instance  of  the  truth  of 
what  I  have  somewhere  said,  that  practically,  in  many 
cases,  Catholics  are  less  superstitious  in  their  way  of 
dealing  with  the  Bible  than  Protestants. 

The  fifteenth  chapter  of  the  first  Epistle  to  the 
Corinthians    appears  in  the  Catholic  offices  for  the 


iv.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BURIALS  BILL.  373 

dead,  but  in  detached  portions ;  each  portion  thus 
becoming  more  intelligible,  and  producing  a  greater 
effect.  Thus  the  seven  verses  from  the  beginning  of 
the  20th  verse  (Now  is  Christ  risen  from  the  dead),  to 
the  end  of  the  26th  (The  last  enemy  that  shall  be 
destroyed  is  death),  form  one  lesson,  and  a  most  im- 
pressive one.  Another  admirable  and  homogeneous 
lesson  is  given  by  taking  the  verses  from  the  41st 
(There  is  one  glory  of  the  sun),  to  the  end  of  the  50th 
(Neither  doth  corruption  inherit  incorruption),  then 
passing  from  thence  to  the  beginning  of  the  53d 
(For  this  corruptible  must  put  on  incorruption),  and  con- 
tinuing down  to  the  end  of  the  next  verse  (Death  is 
swallowed  up  in  victory).  Here  we  have  two  separate 
lessons,  much  shorter,  even  both  of  them  together, 
than  the  present  lesson,  and  (I  think  it  will  be  found) 
more  impressive  by  oeing  detached  from  it. 

But  a  lesson  from  the  Old  Testament  is  surely  to 
be  desired  also.  Who  would  not  love  to  hear,  in  such 
a  service,  that  magnificent  prophecy  on  the  breathing 
of  life  into  the  dry  bones,  the  first  ten  verses  of  the 
thirty-seventh  chapter  of  Ezekiel?  This  also  is  to 
be  found  as  one  of  the  lessons  in  the  Catholic  offices 
for  the  dead.  In  the  same  offices  is  another  lesson, 
even  more  desirable,  it  seems  to  me,  to  have  in  our 
burial-service ; — a  lesson,  the  most  explicit  we  have, 
a  lesson  from  our  Saviour  himself  on  the  resurrection 
of  the  dead.  Simply  that  short  passage  of  the  fifth 
chapter  of  St.  John,  from  the  24th  verse  to  the 
end  of  the  29th  ; — the  passage  containing  the  verse  : 
The  hour  is  coming,  and   now  is,  when  the  dead  shall 


374       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [iv. 

hear  the  voice  of  the  Son  of  God,  and  they  that  hear 
shall  live. 

Thus  we  have,  instead  of  one  long  and  difficult 
lesson,  four  short,  clear,  and  most  powerfully  impres- 
sive ones.  Let  the  rubric  before  the  existing  lesson 
be  changed  to  run  as  follows : — "Then  shall  be  read 
one  or  more  of  these  lessons  following;"  and  we 
shall  have  the  means  of  making  time  for  the  hymn, 
if  hymns  are  desired,  without  unduly  lengthening 
the  service ;  and  if  hymns  are  not  desired,  we  shall 
be  richer  in  our  lessons  than  we  are  now. 

But  the  hymn  at  the  grave  is  not  the  only  con- 
cession which  we  can  without  public  detriment  make 
in  this  matter  to  the  Dissenters.  Many  Dissenters 
prefer  to  bury  their  dead  in  silence.  Silent  funerals 
are  the  practice  in  the  Church  of  Scotland,  and,  I 
believe,  with  Presbyterians  generally.  To  silent 
funerals  in  the  parish  churchyard,  there  can  mani- 
festly be,  on  the  score  of  order,  propriety,  and  dig- 
nity, no  objection.  A  clergyman  cannot  feel  himself 
aggrieved  at  having  to  perform  them.  The  public 
cannot  feel  aggrieved  by  their  being  performed  in  a 
place  of  solemn  and  public  character.  Whenever, 
therefore,  it  is  desired  that  burial  in  the  parish 
churchyard  should  take  place  in  silence,  the  clergy- 
man should  be  authorised  and  directed  to  comply 
with  this  desire. 

IV. 

Thus  I  have  sought  to  make  clear  and  to  justify 
what  I  meant  by  that  short  sentence  about  burials 


IV.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BURIALS  BILL.  375 

which  occurred  in  what  I  said  at  Sion  College,  and 
at  which  a  certain  dissatisfaction  was  expressed  by 
some  whom  I  am  loth  to  dissatisfy.  The  precise 
amount  of  change  recommended,  and  the  reasons 
for  making  it,  and  for  not  making  it  greater,  have 
now  been  fully  stated.  To  sum  up  the  changes 
recommended,  they  are  as  follows : — The  first  rubric 
to  be  expunged;  four  lessons  to  be  substituted  for 
the  present  single  lesson,  and  the  rubric  preceding 
it  to  run :  —  "  Then  shall  be  read  one  or  more  of 
these  lessons  following;"  the  words,  as  our  hope  is 
this  our  brother  doth,  to  be  left  out;  a  hymn  or 
hymns,  from  one  of  the  collections  in  general  use,  to 
be  sung  at  the  grave  if  the  friends  of  the  deceased 
wish  it,  and  if  they  notify  their  desire  to  the  clergy- 
man beforehand;  silent  burial  to  be  performed  on 
the  like  conditions. 

The  Dissenters,  some  of  them,  demand  a  great  deal 
more  than  this,  and  their  political  friends  try  to  get  a 
great  deal  more  for  them.  What  I  have  endeavoured 
is  to  find  out  what  to  a  fair  and  sensible  man,  without 
any  political  and  partisan  bias  whatever,  honestly 
taking  the  circumstances  of  our  country  into  account 
and  the  best  way  of  settling  this  vexed  question  of 
burials, — to  find  out  what  to  such  a  man  would  seem 
to  be  reasonable  and  expedient.  Nor  are  the  conces- 
sions and  changes  proposed  so  insignificant.  I  believe 
the  majority  of  the  Dissenters  themselves  would  be 
satisfied  with  them.  Certainly  this  would  be  the 
case  if  we  count  the  Methodists  with  the  Dissenters, 
and  do  not  mean  by  Dissenters,  as  people  sometimes 


376       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHUKCH  AND  RELIGION.        [iv. 

mean,  the  political  Dissenters  only.  And  those  who 
are  incensed  with  the  folly  of  some  of  the  clergy  in 
this  matter,  and  desire  to  punish  them,  would  prob- 
ably find  that  they  could  inflict  upon  these  men  of 
arbitrary  temper  no  severer  punishment,  than  by 
simply  taking  away  from  them,  where  burials  are 
concerned,  the  scope  for  exercising  it.  However, 
my  object  in  what  I  have  proposed  is  not  to  punish 
certain  of  the  clergy,  any  more  than  to  mortify  certain 
of  the  Dissenters,  but  simply  to  arrive  at  what  is 
most  for  the  good  and  for  the  dignity  of  the  whole 
community.  Certainly  it  is  postulated  that  to  accept 
some  public  form  shall  be  the  condition  for  using 
public  and  venerable  places.  But  really  this  must 
be  clear,  one  would  think,  to  any  one  but  a  partisan, 
if  he  at  all  knows  what  "things  lovely  and  of  good 
report "  are,  and  the  value  of  them.  It  must  be  clear 
to  many  of  the  warmest  adversaries  of  the  Church. 
It  is  not  hidden,  I  am  sure,  from  Mr.  John  Morley 
himself,  who  is  a  lover  of  culture,  and  of  elevation, 
and  of  beauty,  and  of  human  dignity.  I  am  sure 
he  feels,  that  what  is  here  proposed  is  more  reason- 
able and  desirable  than  what  his  Dissenting  friends 
demand.  Scio,  rex  Agrvppa,  quia  credis.  He  is  keep- 
ing company  with  his  Festus  Chamberlain,  and  his 
Drusilla  Collings,  and  cannot  openly  avow  the  truth ; 
but  in  his  heart  he  consents  to  it. 

And  now  I  do  really  take  leave  of  the  question 
of  Church  and  Dissent,  as  I  promised.  Whether  the 
Dissenters  will  believe  it  or  not,  my  wish  to  reconcile 
them  with  the  Church  is  from  no  desire  to  give  their 


IV.]  A  LAST  WORD  ON  THE  BURIALS  BILL.  377 

adversaries  a  victory  and  them  a  defeat,  but  from  the 
conviction  that  they  are  on  a  false  line ;  from  sorrow 
at  seeing  their  fine  qualities  and  energies  thrown 
away,  from  hope  of  signal  good  to  this  whole  nation 
if  they  can  be  turned  to  better  account.  "  The  dis- 
sidence  of  Dissent,  and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Pro- 
testant religion,"  have  some  of  mankind's  deepest  and 
truest  instincts  against  them,  and  cannot  finally  pre- 
vail. If  they  prevail  for  a  time,  that  is  only  a  tem- 
porary stage  in  man's  history ;  they  will  fail  in  the 
end,  and  will  have  to  confess  it. 

It  is  said,  and  on  what  seems  good  authority,  that 
already  in  America,  that  Paradise  of  the  sects,  there 
are  signs  of  reaction,  and  that  the  multitude  of  sects 
there  begin  to  tend  to  agglomerate  themselves  into  two 
or  three  great  bodies.  It  is  said,  too,  that  whereas 
the  Church  of  Rome,  in  the  first  year  of  the  j)resent 
century,  had  but  one  in  two  hundred  of  the  popula- 
tion of  the  United  States,  it  has  now  one  in  six  or 
seven.  This  at  any  rate  is  certain,  that  the  great  and 
sure  gainer  by  the  dissidence  of  Dissent  and  the  Pro- 
testantism of  the  Protestant  religion  is  the  Church  of 
Rome.  Unity  and  continuity  in  public  religious  wor- 
ship are  a  need  of  human  nature,  an  eternal  aspiration 
of  Christendom ;  but  unity  and  continuity  in  religious 
worship  joined  with  perfect  mental  sanity  and  free- 
dom. A  Catholic  Church  transformed  is,  I  believe, 
the  Church  of  the  future.  But  what  the  Dissenters, 
by  their  false  aims  and  misused  powers,  at  present 
effect,  is  to  extend  and  prolong  the  reign  of  a  Catholic 
Church,  witransformed,  with  all  its  conflicts,  impossi- 

VOL.  VII.  2  B  2 


378       LAST  ESSAYS  ON  CHURCH  AND  RELIGION.        [iv. 

bilities,  miseries.  That,  however,  is  what  the  Dis- 
senters, in  their  present  state,  cannot  and  will  not 
see.  For  the  growth  of  insight  to  recognise  it,  one 
must  rely,  both  among  the  Dissenters  themselves  and 
in  the  nation  which  has  to  judge  their  aims  and  pro- 
ceedings, on  the  help  of  time  and  progress; — time 
and  progress,  in  alliance  with  the  ancient  and  inbred 
integrity,  piety,  good  nature,  and  good  humour  of  the 
English  people. 


THE  END. 


Printed  by  R.  &  R.  Clark,  Edinburgh. 


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